| RATING: | 80% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
An oddly-confused film that dares not face its own motivations.
The film is divided into two halves: A forbidden-love story that breaks native-island traditional and is thus taboo; the commercial exploitation of the naïve natives initiated by Whites.
Here we have a Gauguin like island paradise that is being presented as untouched by (White) civilization. Yet the native performers are presented in terms of first-world stereotypes about them and artfully posed in the Teutonic aesthetic tradition. This White search for paradise reminds one of an old Bounty bar tv commercial and spoils what could have been a superlative fiction.
The theme of conquerors untrammeled by the moral codes of their own homeland and only following their own desires is well envisioned. As well as the conquered learning to prey on each other as soon as they had abandoned belief in their own culture. This is what happens when you have no allegiance and no culture to believe in and perpetuate. A story repeated around the world with the addition of some homo erotic fantasizing on the admittedly-athletic builds of the young native males.
Despite all of this, this is a colorful black & white movie of a culture that is to be admired for its simplicity and various childlike qualities - the ostensible reason for making it as well as provide the White filmmakers with an opportunity to get away from the soullessness of the First World.
The aesthetic brilliance of this film is contained in a single fact: It is silent without intertitles, because the visuals are so expressive they are not needed.
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