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Goto, Island of Love
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| Year: |
1969
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Director: |
Walerian Borowczyk
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| Stars: |
Pierre Brasseur, Ligia Branice, Guy Saint-Jean, Jean-Pierre Andréani, Ginette Leclerc, Fernand Bercher, Michel Charrel, Pierre Collet, Raoul Darblay, Rudy Lenoir, Maritin, Colette Régis, Michel Thomass, Ari Arcadi, Guy Bonnafoux, Canari, René Dary
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| Genre: |
Drama, Fantasy |
| Rating: |
  6 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Goto is a small island that used to be larger and more populated until an earthquake disaster in the late eighteen-hundreds saw to it that most of the place was destroyed, along with many of the inhabitants, almost all of them in fact. Their descendants still survive there, led by the Governor Goto III (Pierre Brasseur) who is married to the younger Glossia (Ligia Branice), and their society is based around a selection of rigid rules everyone takes for granted, from the schoolchildren who learn about their history to the criminals who learn the hard way there is no lawbreaking allowed, with fights to the death the common manner of settling on a punishment for crime. Grozo (Guy Saint-Jean) is one such criminal...
Director Walerian Borowczyk had been making a name for himself in the field of animation when he finally decided to make the leap from cartooning to live action with this, his first feature length project. He later became known for presenting works of erotica in a fantastical setting, whether that be some twisted fairy tale or more overtly horrific stylings, but here the saucy stuff was kept to two or three scenes, and short ones at that: the sequence in a bath house full of bathing women and a couple of sex scenes almost coyly included, not that the director would remain coy in his following career. This was a kind of fairy tale in itself, a fully realised environment of rundown surroundings, captured in vivid black and white.
There were colour moments as well, inserts where you would see single, isolated closeups of objects from the previous, wider frame, such as a pair of dancing shoes or a bucket of blood. If you wanted a reference point, Borowczyk appeared to have read Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast recent to penning his screenplay as this detailed the rise of the lowly Grozo from almost getting executed at the beginning of the film to a position of status in the decaying society by the end, though noted is that he does not get it all his own way, as nobody really does in the story. Though some have it worse than others, and the sense of a community falling apart and one man taking advantage of that is almost but not quite successful - this was still patently a first feature.
Instead of conveying the feeling of the entire island what we had were mere snapshots, so there was a sketchlike quality to the texture of the film even if there were few signs it was supposed to be funny, in spots or otherwise. It more belonged to the strain of surrealism that brought about such French works from the era as the deliberately obscure films of Alain Robbe-Grillet or Jean-Claude Vannier's cult classic concept album L'Enfant Assasin des Mouches, with which Goto shares an obsession with flies (of the insect variety). Once Grozo escapes his death sentence by besting the strongest man on the island in combat (he was a criminal too) he is given a reward, though it sounds pretty piffling: be the Governor's official fly swatter (or fly drowner, in some cases).
But he begins to creep his way up the social ladder as he is assigned the position of looking after Glossia's clothes and shoes, revealing early signs of Borowczyk's foot fetishism as the antihero caresses her boots as he shines them lovingly. This graduates to a love for her that presumably must be the love of the title, since there isn't much else it applies to: Goto, Isle of Stifling Conventions Leading to an Eventual Break-up of the Society would be a more apt name, though you'd have trouble fitting that on the poster. The Governor loves her too, as we see in one of the many seemingly random digressions with the married couple on the beach, he nearly drowning thanks to a poorly constructed rowing boat. But his life may be in danger anyway if he grows any closer to Grozo, who is conniving his way through this lot Steerpike-fashion; he doesn't come across as the Machiavellian sort at first glance, yet the script contrives to render him a mastermind compared to his fellow islanders. That he doesn't get it all his own way remains no cause for celebration.
Aka: Goto, l'île d'amour
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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