Robin Campillo

Enzo

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Enzo takes a phone call

If it’s gay versus queer then gay wins out in Enzo, a coming-of-age/coming-out drama of the old school, where the homosexuality is the subject under discussion, the problem to be solved, rather than window-dressing to something else. Enzo is a 16-year-old French lad who has rejected the life that was in his stars. Currently working as a labourer, he was meant to be following a similar trajectory to his brother – university, some sort of career – but has instead dropped out and is hefting sacks about on a building site where his soft hands are picking up blisters. As we meet him, Enzo is being given a hard time by his boss, the … Read more

Red Island

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Thomas and mother Colette

A hypnotic coming-of-ager from Robin Campillo, drawing on his own childhood growing up in one of France’s last colonial outposts (Madagascar) for Red Island (L’île rouge), a story about a little boy who watches and learns as the French expat community do their thing. It is beautifully observed and gorgeously put together but it’s the sort of subject matter which, in the wrong hands, would be all sorts of boring. Campillo, though, is a great film-maker and with open nods masters like Abel Gance and Eisenstein, he assembles his film poetically. It is an intoxicating experience. And yet, superficially, it is done as if this were cold, clean and factual storytelling. Life on … Read more