THE RED TURTLE

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4 stars
Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation powerhouse behind animé classics like The Wind Rises and Howl’s Moving Castle has created its first non-Japanese feature, The Red Turtle.
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Though what about this dialogue free feature about a castaway on a deserted island who falls in love with a beautiful woman and former turtle is anything but classic Ghibli (and therefore infused with Japanese classicism) is hard to spot.

None the less, Michael Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle is an enigmatic beauty of visual story-telling from its stormy beginnings to elegant coda. Along the way, a man is washed up on an island and prevented from leaving by a mysterious turtle. When he tries to hurt the beast in an angry fit of desperation, it mysteriously turns into a woman and the unlikely couple bond. They have a child and happy times follow until age and the boy’s need to create his own future, cloud the couple’s days.

The Red Turtle is a delightful fable whose simple charms charm because of their simplicity. Each unfussy yet finely composed frame speaks to universal truths and the daily trial of surviving in a world as complex as ours, or as simple as theirs. No matter your place in time or space, it all comes down to the same questions, the same values: hope, acceptance, support. Every frame of The Red Turtle leaves you with a feeling that this new tale is on as old as time itself, which in many ways it is. Animation is seldom as thoughtful nor as moving as this.

// COLIN FRASER

Previewed at the Sony Theatre, Sydney, on 15 September 2016.
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ANIMATION

DIRECTOR
Michael Dudok de Wit

SCREENWRITER
Michael Dudok de Wit

COUNTRY

France / Japan

CLASSIFICATION
PG

RUNTIME
80 minutes

AUSTRALIAN
RELEASE DATE
September 22, 2016
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The Red Turtle (2016) on IMDb
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