The Red Turtle

The Red Turtle
Film poster
Directed by	Michaël Dudok de Wit
Produced by	Toshio Suzuki[1] Vincent Maraval Pascal Caucheteux Grégoire Sorlat Léon Perahia
Written by	Michaël Dudok de Wit Pascale Ferran
Music by	Laurent Perez del Mar
Production companies	Why Not Productions[2] Wild Bunch Studio Ghibli CN4 Productions Arte France Cinéma Belvision Animation production: Prima Linea Productions[3]
Distributed by	Wild Bunch (France) Toho (Japan) Lumière (Belgium/Netherlands) Sony Pictures Classics (United States)
Release dates	18 May 2016 (2016-05-18) (Cannes) 29 June 2016 (2016-06-29) (France) 17 September 2016 (2016-09-17) (Japan)
Running time	80 minutes
Country	France Belgium Japan
Language	None[4]
Box office	US$2.8 million[5]

The Red Turtle (French: La Tortue Rouge; Japanese: レッドタートル ある島の物語) is a 2016 French-Belgian-Japanese animated film directed by Dutch-British animator Michaël Dudok de Wit in his feature film debut. The film is a co-production between Wild Bunch and Studio Ghibli, and tells the story of a man who becomes shipwrecked on a deserted island and meets a giant red turtle. The film has no dialogue.^[4] It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.^[6][7]

Plot

A nameless man set a drift by a storm wakes up on a deserted island. Finding fresh fruit and water, as well as a large variety of animals and a sweeping forest of bamboo, the man decides to leave the island. The man builds a raft from bamboo, and attempts to sail away. However, an unseen animal destroys the raft, forcing the man back to the island. Attempting to escape with another raft, his plan fails again from the unseen animal. Trying a third time, he finds that the animal is in fact a red turtle. His raft being destroyed again, the man retreats back to the island.

That evening, the man sees the red turtle crawling on the shore, attempting to go inland. In revenge, he hits the red turtle on the head with a stick, and pushes it over on its back. After halfway through building another raft, the man starts to feel guilty about leaving the turtle upside down, so he catches a fish and tries to feed it to the turtle, but finds that it has died. The turtle's shell splits down the middle during the night, and to the man's surprise, the turtle turns into a woman. The man tries to revive her, making a shelter over her to protect her from the sun. When rain hits the island, the woman wakes up. The man notices she has gone, and searches the island for her, finally seeing that she is the coastline. Giving her his shirt, he eventually sees the woman dragging the now empty turtle shell into the sea. The man does the same with his half-built raft. The pair eventually form a relationship.

Some years later, the couple have a son, who finds a bottle washed up on shore. After accidentally falling into a small cavern, the son forms a peculiar relationship with other turtles in the ocean. Growing up, the son grows to be accustomed to the island. When he goes into the island for fresh water with his bottle, a tsunami hits the island. Though no one is severely hurt, the island's forest is near completely demolished by it. After burning the remains of bamboo, the son finds his bottle in an oasis in the island. Deciding to leave the island, the son bids his parents farewell, and swims away with a trio of turtles.

Growing old together, the man and the woman spend the rest of their lives on the island. The man dies peacefully one night, while looking at the moon. The woman, holding the man's hand one more time, transforms back into the red turtle, and crawls back to the ocean.

Production

The film was co-produced by Wild Bunch and Studio Ghibli in association with Why Not Productions. According to Vincent Maraval, head of Wild Bunch, he visited Studio Ghibli in Japan in 2008 and met with Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki showed him the short film Father and Daughter and asked him to find its director, Michaël Dudok de Wit, with the prospect of co-producing a feature film. Wild Bunch approached Dudok de Wit in London and convinced him to take on the project. The screenplay was written by Dudok de Wit and Pascale Ferran.^[8][9]

Release

The film premiered on 18 May at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, where it competed in the Un Certain Regard section.^[10] On 13 June, it was screened as the opening film of the 2016 Annecy International Animated Film Festival.^[11] The regular French release was 29 June 2016.^[12] It was released in Japan on 17 September 2016.^[13] In May 2016, Sony Pictures Classics acquired the North and Latin American distribution rights for the film^[14] and is scheduled to be released in the United States on 20 January 2017. The Red Turtle was played in the London Film Festival on 5 October 2016.

Reception

Critical response

The Red Turtle received critical acclaim. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it has a 90% score based on 29 reviews, with an average of 8.2/10.^[15] Metacritic reports a 92 out of 100 rating based on 8 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".^[16]

Accolades

References

External links

• Official website (French)
• Official website (Japanese)
• Official website (English)
• The Red Turtle at the Internet Movie Database
• The Red Turtle at The Big Cartoon DataBase
• The Red Turtle at Box Office Mojo
• The Red Turtle at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Red Turtle at Metacritic