Rose Island: By any name, it's a hoot!

Rose Island (2020) • View trailer

3.5 stars. Rated TV-14, for considerable profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.8.21

Truth really is stranger than fiction.

 

In 1967 — annoyed by the ponderous Italian bureaucracy involved with any sort of construction — innovative Bolognese engineer Giorgio Rosa sank nine pylons into the ocean off the coastal city of Rimini, at the country’s northeastern tip. The pylons soon supported a 400-square-meter “island” platform that, over time, hosted a restaurant, bar, nightclub, souvenir shop and post office: all free of rules and regulations, and open to tourists who soon arrived in enthusiastic numbers.

 

With their "independent island state" having become a popular tourist attraction,
Giorgio (Elio Germano) and Neumann (Tom Wlaschiha) wonder what to do next.

On June 24, 1968 — having shrewdly placed his little enclave just beyond Italy’s territorial waters — Rosa declared it an independent state dubbed Insulo de la Rozoj, and named himself president. He declared an official language (Esperanto), created a flag, issued stamps and set up a council of ministers. Piles of mail began to arrive, from people desiring citizenship on this artificial island.

 

We’ll never know whether Rosa genuinely desired to tweak the Italian government, or wanted to conduct an ingenious sociology experiment, or regarded this as the perfect way to mingle with counter-culture Riviera hedonists, or simply had a wicked sense of humor.

 

Rosa died in 2017, having agreed that these events could be depicted in a film to be released after his passing. It didn’t take long: L’incredibile storia dell’Isola delle Rose (Rose Island) has just arrived as a Netflix exclusive.

 

It’s quite delightful: very much akin to droll, low-key British charmers … but in Italian.

 

Director Sydney Sibilia — who co-wrote the script with Francesca Manieri — has taken liberties with historical fact; it’s best to acknowledge that his film is suggested by actual events. Key details are accurate, but Sibilia has made much more of Rosa’s capricious bid for statehood, and its impact on the Italian government, in order to get more of a cinematic story by tweaking a series of fabricated officials running all the way up to the Vatican.

 

The result feels strongly influenced, in tone and structure, by 2009’s Pirate Radio, with its similarly affectionate nod to renegade spirit.

 

This also is very much a 1960s saga; one can’t imagine it occurring at any other point in time. The film’s soundtrack therefore is laden with the era’s pop tunes, in a variety of languages: from Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction,” The Kinks’ cover of “Louie Louie” and Shocking Blues’s “Send Me a Postcard,” to Dik Dik’s robust Italian cover of “California Dreaming.”

 

We meet Giorgio Rosa (Elio Germano) during a brief flash-forward, as he attempts to gain an audience with the Council of Europe, headquartered in Strasbourg, France. His case piques the curiosity of diplomat Jean Baptiste Toma (François Cluzet).

 

The always terrific Cluzet, well remembered from 2006’s Tell No One and 2011’s The Intouchables, is an intriguing choice for such a fleeting role; that said, he definitely makes the most of his brief screen time.

 

Toma grants Giorgio the opportunity to explain his presence; we then bounce back a year, to watch these events unfold.

 

The Intouchables: Guaranteed to touch your heart

The Intouchables (2011) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: R, for profanity and drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.8.12

On June 27, 1993, Philippe Pozzo di Borgo — fifth son of Duke Pozzi di Borgo, and acting director of France’s Pommery Champagne — was seriously injured while paragliding. The accident broke his spine and left him a quadriplegic, unable to sense or move anything below his neck.

Wanting to make a good impression on a first date, Philippe (François Cluzet,
center) tolerates a wide variety of clothing options, with Yvonne (Anne Le Ny)
and Driss (Omar Sy) granting nods of approval or snorts of disgust.

Three years later, his beloved wife Beatrice lost her struggle against a prolonged illness. That was one tragedy too many; Philippe sank into a depression and abandoned the will to endure each new day.

Until the arrival of his “guardian devil,” an Algerian-born career criminal named Abdel Yasmin Sellou, who became the wealthy man’s caregiver.

Nobody likes to stand out for the wrong reasons; those who draw stares inevitably wish for the invisibility of the ordinary. And that, in a nutshell, is what Abdel gave Philippe: pragmatism and brutal truth.

Abdel brought Philippe back to vibrant life in every sense of the word; the latter detailed this unusual relationship in a popular 2001 book, The Second Wind. That led to a 2003 TV documentary, A la vie, à la mort (In Life, Death), which in turn inspired filmmakers Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano to make the big-screen drama The Intouchables, a smash hit in France and now newly released on our shores.

“Inspirational” simply isn’t a strong enough word for this enchanting film.

The saga’s rougher edges have been smoothed out, particularly with respect to the caregiver’s dodgier backstory. (Rather oddly, he has been transformed into a Senegalese immigrant named Driss here.) The goal clearly was crowd-pleasing entertainment, and Nakache and Toledano side-stepped any details too grim to interfere with that tone. But they haven’t skirted any of the day-to-day challenges involved with attending a quadriplegic; indeed, that’s where much of the story’s cheerful outlook resides.

Following a droll prologue, the story opens as Philippe (François Cluzet, well remembered as the endangered lead in the sensational 2006 thriller, Tell No One) and his secretary/assistant, Magalie (Audrey Fleurot), consider applicants for the position of his 24/7 caregiver. These interviews, the overlapping responses staged for comic effect, are deftly edited — Dorian Rigal-Ansous, take a bow — in the manner of countless “tryout scenes” from films as diverse as All That Jazz and The Commitments, among many others.

Driss (Omar Sy) stands out like the proverbial bull in a china shop: too tall, too brutish, too unrefined, too brusque, too loud, too ... street. And, indeed, he’s present only to collect a signature that demonstrates the token job-application effort needed to qualify for his next welfare check.

Tell No One: Spread the word!

Tell No One (2008) • View trailer for Tell No One
4.5 stars (out of five). Unrated, with nudity, sexual content, violence, profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.22.08
Buy DVD: Tell No One • Buy Blu-Ray: Tell No One [Blu-ray]

To employ a phrase I don't get to use nearly often enough, this is one of the best pictures Alfred Hitchcock never made.

French filmmaker Guillaume Canet's riveting adaptation of Harlan Coben's novel, Tell No One, hits the ground running and never lets up. It's a mature, thoughtful and rigorously intelligent thriller that eschews noisy gunfire and car chases in favor of solid character development and a twisty plot that demands one's full attention.

Alex (François Cluzet) watches while his wife, Margot (Marie-Josee Croze),
cuts another notch into the tree that has a carved heart with their initials: a
treasured reminder of yet anothe ryear spent in happily married bliss. Sadly,
this is the deliriously romantic calm before a truly horrific storm; Alex and
Margot are about to be ripped apart in the worst possible way.

That is, alas, the one minor drawback. The subtitles don't capture quite all of the essential dialogue — anybody with the slightest familiarity with French will catch phrases that get left behind in translation — and that forces us American viewers to watch even more carefully.

Ah, but the rewards are worthwhile. Canet guides a solid cast through a meticulously constructed plot that doesn't waste a line of dialogue or even the slightest of background characters.

François Cluzet stars as Dr. Alexandre Beck, a pediatrician introduced with his wife, Margot (Marie-Josee Croze), as they enjoy a lively dinner with friends and family. The following day, Alex and Margot — childhood sweethearts who grew up together and eventually married — enact a familiar ritual, as they find a particular tree in a lakeside forest, and add another notch to the carved heart that carries their initials.

This is followed by a sexy swim, and then a contemplative cuddle on the lake's floating wooden platform.

Margot returns to shore first, and then Alex hears something. He listens, catches what sounds like a cry of alarm, and swims madly back to the dock, only to be beaten unconscious and left to drown.

Fade to black.

Eight years later, Alex has gotten on with his life, although he still desperately misses Margot, murdered that horrible night by a rampaging serial killer. The circumstances remain murky; even with an obvious suspect, the police mistrusted Alex for quite some time, despite his having spent three days in a coma. Although no physical evidence tied him to the crime, his unconscious body was found on the dock ... and nobody can explain how he got out of the water.

Now, like some ghastly resurrected nightmare, Alex is forced to confront the entire incident again: Police have discovered the bodies of two men, killed by gunfire and buried at the lake not far from where Margot's body was found. One carries a key that leads to a safe-deposit box, the contents of which include some damning photos of Margot, at some point prior to her death, and taken after she was beaten badly by ... somebody.

Once again, police suspicion falls on Alex.