SFF NOTES: The Red Turtle (2016, Dir. Michaël Dudok de Wit)

Ostensibly, The Red Turtle is the latest Studio Ghibli release to grace our screens, though director Michaël Dudok de Wit's beautifully rendered animated feature shares little of the Japanese anime stalwart's look or feel. That isn't a bad thing in itself; the film still has a remarkable sense of composition, colour and movement. And, even without a single word being uttered, it is enchanting.

Fair warning though, the tools in Dudok de Wit's kit can only take The Red Turtle's castaway sailor finding inter-species domestic bliss on a desert island tale so far. Without the robust characterisation afforded by verbal expression, the film's touching moments, and its frightening ones, its moments of awe and wonder, all evaporate pretty quickly.

That's not to say that a non-verbal film can't emote or engage, but de Wit's isn't tuned quite finely enough. Its splashes of cutely designed humour give over to rousing nature connectivity then to thundering force majeure, then back again. There is no real crescendo of feeling and little sense of growth or journey.

Surprisingly, the film's score, which would usually do most of heavy lifting in the absence of dialogue, is just as scattered. Laurent Perez Del Mar's orchestral work is far too analogous; it plays in time rather than overstepping the boundaries of the images. And so it fails to swirl the senses and settles the film into a parade of piecemeal wonderment.

It has smatterings of beauty that thrill in spurts but The Red Turtle never threatens to sweep the heart away.

★★★

Trailer:

The Red Turtle screened as part of the Sydney Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.