A virtually forgotten incident of the near past, in 1968, Italian engineer Giorgio Rosa built a micro-nation, a 400 square meter platform, to be exact, later referred as “The Republic of Rose Island”, in the Adriatic Sea, 11 kilometers off the coast of the province of Rimini. The Republic is outside the territorial waters and legal jurisdiction of Italy, and would be demolished in 1969 by Italian government. It is an ephemera but denotes a consummate symbol of a man's utopian pursuit of liberty.
This film adaptation is directed by Sydney Sibilia, who has flexed his muscles with I CAN QUIT WHENEVER I WANT trilogy, and stars Elio Germano as Giorgio the idealist. Starting in medias res, in the snow-covered Strasbourg, we are introduced to the scenes where Giorgio seeks legal help from Council of Europe to secure his state's autonomy, the far-outness of Giorgio's plea is so incredible, and ROSE ISLAND does crank up the story's comical value, but founders to examine Giorgio and his co.'s habitus under a larger societal pattern, viz. the flower power. We get glimpses of the monochromatic footage of May '68, but what is the connexion between it and Giorgio's spectacular whimsy?
Sibilia and his co-writer are more invested in the trite romantic plot than the zeitgeist the itty-bitty island-state represents, what is its allure? why people come and who are those people? It must be more than just a modish disco on the ocean, apparently, Sibilia is rather in the mood to gratify the audience with a banal and feel-good generality (the whole fuss fizzles out as a hoary fairy tale of winning back the heart of the girl Giorgio loves) than plumbing into the material's specificities, for example, what about the spadework? How Giorgio and his buddy Maurizio (Lidi) have the wherewithal to build the platform ex nihilo? That is the most incredible feat of the whole shebang and yet, it is regrettably skirted over.
Sibilia is, at least, blessed with a winning cast to iron out the pedestrian dialogue and plot hyperbole, Germano contends to act young and look wide-eyed so his Giorgio can be a contemporary of Gabriella (De Angelis, who is 15 years younger than Germano), the girl of his dream. But the real trouper among them is Fabrizio Bentivoglio, who plays the hardliner Franco Restivo, the Minister of the Interior. Bentivoglio is all fire and storm, injects enough bite and snap to give the film some reality check, notice the confrontation by phone between Giorgio and Restivo, the scenario could be suspiciously fictional, but emotionally, ROSE ISLAND reaches its acme here, not that faux-heroic gesture near the end, what a jejune letdown. Never really rooted in its terroir , Sibilia's film is all gloss and levity,reducing “The Republic of Rose Island” almost to an egotistic stunt.
referential entries: Fratelli D'Innocenzo's BAD TALES (2020, 7.8/10); Paolo Sorrentino's LORO (2018, 7.2/10).
English Title: Rose Island
Original Title: L'incredibile storia dell'Isola delle Rose
Year: 2020
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy
Language: Italian, French, German
Director: Sydney Sibilia
Screenwriters: Sydney Sibilia, Francesa Manieri
Music: Michele Braga
Cinematography: Valerio Azzali
Editing: Gianni Vezzosi
Cast:
Elio Germano
Leonardo Lidi
Matilda De Angelis
Tom Wlaschiha
Fabrizio Bentivoglio
Luca Zingaretti
François Cluzet
Andrea Pennacchi
Alberto Astorri
Violetta Zironi
Fabrizio Rongione
Ascanio Balbo
Federico Pacifici
Giulio Farnese
Teco Celio
Riccardo Marzi
Rating: 6.3/10
View more about Rose Island reviews
