THE “WORLD’S” OPINION – NOT TO BE MISSED
It’s summer, and it’s Rosa’s (Rosa Berder) last evening in Brittany. Tomorrow, she will fly to Montreal, where she will enter a dance school. Before leaving, she meets her friends on the beach for a memorable party. With the minimal narrative of The IslandDamien Manivel invents a form that loves us, by constructing this fiction exclusively from rehearsal scenes, mixing fiction with the documentary part of the filming.
Coming from contemporary dance, the filmmaker works with fragments, these tiny and intense moments where movement takes shape in front of the camera. He is the author of minimalist “solos”, among others Isadora’s Children (2019) – Leopard for best achievement in Locarno –, where, in turn, four dancers revisit a gesture by Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), and the captivating Magdala (2022), with choreographer Elsa Wolliaston.
Initially, Damien Manivel wanted to film The Island, his sixth feature film, in a single sequence shot, like a ribbon of bodies winding up and warming up before separation. The director began rehearsals, while filming them, with seven young actors, in July 2022, in a gymnasium, but also on the sand, between the rocks where goodbyes and promises of reunion take place. Filming was supposed to take place at the end of August, but it was not possible due to lack of money.
It was by reviewing the rushes, a little later, that the producer of The Island, Martin Bertier, convinced Damien Manivel that there was the possibility of a film. The filmmaker took his scissors to carve out a fragmented, intoxicating story, Rosa’s voice-over guiding the viewer through the twists and turns of this drunken evening.
Vertigo from groping
We enter a multi-dimensional story, where the filmmaker makes the instructions he whispers to the actors heard. At what moment, and in what way, will the bodies of Rosa and her lover, Damoh (Damoh Ikheteah), come closer and brush against each other in the middle of the group? Rather than choosing one take among several, Damien Manivel sometimes chooses two, almost identical without really being so. It is in this very fine breach that the treasure of The Island : an inflection of voice which colors the atmosphere, an arm which embraces differently…
The repetition of a scene seems to stop time. Damien Manivel keeps the night going, until dawn, inviting the viewer behind the scenes to make them experience the vertigo of trial and error. Among the smoking and alcohol scenes, we remember a dazzling shot, the one where Rosa puffs on an invisible cigarette, the actors not actually smoking during rehearsals. At this moment, we only see a gesture, a choreography, the hand carrying out a path, fingers slightly apart approaching the face, then slowly moving away from it.
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