Movie review: Private Tropical 25 "Mistery Island" (2006) (Katy Paro, Kathy Undersun, Priva Ley, Isa Eyes, Diana Bold)
Thanatotourism is in vogue no matter how inexplicable it may seem. Certain types of people are motivated to visit gloomy places where misfortune has occurred and where intense negative energies, telluric forces and mystery are concentrated. Proof of this are publications such as the "Atlas of Dark Destinations" by Peter Hohenhaus, which collects data on buildings as dark as Kilmainham Gaol, the Auschwitz extermination camp or the irradiated city of Prypiat. In this new installment of the tropical saga, Bárbara is an investigative journalist who flies to the island of Guadalupe to get closer to a ruined mansion where murders were perpetrated in the 19th century... although this time it is a trip for work.
Part 1 of Mistery Island
Part 2 of Mistery Island
TRAILER of Mistery Island
I can say without fear of being wrong that this is Bellocchio's best film within the tropical compendium. Already in the first scene, an arrest appears with a man tied up demanding justice, while a woman cries inconsolably and accuses him of being the author of brutal blood crimes. The guards ignore the vehement pleas of the imprisoned man, who watches in terror from the shadows, behind the bars and losing hope for moments...
The look of a betrayed dog
Scenography worthy of the Farnace opera
The clothing of everyone present, the moonlight illuminating the prison and the total absence of human rights in the entire scene place us chronologically a couple of centuries ago... Faced with this panorama, the video store customer gets up from the couch with heart aching to check if the clueless clerk has given him the wrong tape...
Then, we move to the present, to the crystal clear waters of the Caribbean. On the deck of a catamaran, two men and a woman wait for a seaplane to land.
There is no music at this party
The seaplane lands like a duck on a calm lake
Aboard the aircraft arrives Barbara, the journalist who works for the Hungarian crime magazine "Fourth Millennium" (Negyedik évezred) and who has crossed the pond in order to make a journalistic report regarding some ruinous buildings and a story that there it happened.
"The catamaran of mystery"
For the reporter, the long trip to the French Antilles from Budapest, with a stopover at De Gaulle airport, has left her completely exhausted, but she is happy to see her husband again, Sean, who finally introduces her to his brother, Vincent, and his respective girlfriend, Sarah. By the way, I recommend watching the film in its origianal version because Barbara is originally from Great Britain, and has very refined English.
Sarah listens with dread to the story that Barbara has just told.
Before continuing, I would like to make a note and it is that it is not made clear at any time what the hell everyone is doing there, dancing with Barbara during a work trip. I am inclined to think that it could be a new installment of "extreme cheapskates" in which all the travelers share Barbara's diets, covered by the magazine's editor...
The sun leaves the Saint Francois region and the stormy clouds break through
"In this bed it has been very cold in your absence"
In the tiny cabin at bedtime, Sean tries to spread the worm but Barbara has a lot of work ahead of her, and many hours of flying behind her, so she rejects him rudely and without a hint of hesitation. The next morning, Barbara is the last to get up and appears on deck while Vincent and Sean are already setting the sails to go sailing.
To a set table
First stop: a shipwreck
Sarah breaking the fourth wall but with her forehead
Sean always dresses with a colombian hitman look
Among ruins, like a war reporter
Barbara has refrained from sailing because she has a lot of work to do. Already the first day in the Antilles, he approaches the town in ruins. She explains that one day all the inhabitants of the village left without any explanation, like in the Iranian city of Kharanaq, but she tells it in a way that suggests that the murders she is going to investigate had a lot to do with the curse of said town.
Meanwhile, on the high seas, Vincent prepares a good trick for his brother Sean and when they are enjoying the tranquility of the sailboat, a small boat appears with a stunning moray eel and a substitution takes place: Vincent leaves and boards the catamaran Carol, who together with Sarah, will work as a team to make "suffer" the loyal Sean.
A trap with her sister-in-law as an accomplice
Meanwhile, Vincent goes to see a banana plantation that belongs to a couple of friends. This plantation is in the southern part of Grande Terre, and receives many visitors every day to explain how this nutritious fruit is harvested.
The Plantation Grand Café in Guadalupe is the setting for the following scene
Vincent's friends dress in a style that mixes hippie and paisa
One of the most notable product placements of the entire saga: the German firm Adidas.
In the ruins, when Barbara stops in front of a boulder, we are going to experience the first supernatural experience... some flashbacks that are going to tell her the truth about those mysterious and bloody murders...
Walking among old buildings...
A stone or a stargate
A voyeur says: cu cú
Frightened, Barbara flees the ruins because a wanderer dressed in what looks like a monk's habit was watching her with a malicious expression. An old Prussian saying says that you should consider everyone you meet in the forest (jungle, in this case) as a criminal, since you can always change your mind. Otherwise, you may never get the chance to do it.
Back on the catamaran, moored in the port of Saint Francois to spend the night, Barbara tells the gruesome experience to her husband Sean, who listens without much attention and without giving any credibility to the facts, seems to close his eyes during the conversation. .. "There are a lot of crazy people on the loose," he says, to finally rest and disconnect from the gossip and fantasies that his wife always tells him just when he is falling asleep.
Sleep deprivation is a form of torture... my dear
Despite the horrible experience of the previous day, Bárbara returns to the ruins after dawn, and the hermit with the smell of cachupe soon makes an appearance... stalking behind her steps and observing the journalist's every movement...
This place has not been subject to massive gentrification as it should, and perhaps people with few resources have taken advantage of that.
This time, Barbara does not find the stone, surely hidden by the sinister black-robed wanderer. However, the truth always makes its way, and now his camera has become some kind of multidimensional device that Doctor Brenner from Stranger Things would kill for. To the purest Stephen King in "The Sun Dog", the camera opens a temporal gap with what happened there in the 19th century...
Seeing Barbara's reaction when looking through the lens,
The restlessness of the strange ascetic is already bordering on paroxysm...
Katrin admiring the love of her life... Tobey
Now they are no longer a pair of flashbacks of suffering without context... Barbara now witnesses a sensory experience that allows her to follow the thread of a conversation between lovers, in which Katrin expresses her fear to Tobey: her sister's promiscuity. Victoria is also coming to work at the mansion, and she thinks it won't take him long to fall in love with her long blonde hair and blue eyes...
With genuflection...
The location of this palace, with snow, silt and steppe plains, is not in the Antilles, and although climate change is advancing irrevocably, there has never been such cold weather in the Caribbean. The true location of this mansion is on the outskirts of Budapest and is known as the Zichy hadik kastely. The script and the cunning of Max Bellocchio have taken it to the heart of the island of Guadeloupe but in the form of ruins.
Check it out in Google maps
After the formal introductions of Victoria, the sister, and Caroline, a family friend, it is a good time to take a walk through the lord's domain. Excellent setting for this scene that transports us to the past, and very well decorated with wonderful musical compositions by Oreste Fiengo.
A walk throught the countryside
This is more entertaining than "Hidden passion"...
The new signing seems to be the most helpful
The knowing glances begin
The glory days of this palace have come to an end... (it is currently abandoned and neglected: a big mistake by the Hungarian government)
Among Bukhara rugs, the owner of the mansion, Mr. De Norton, informs his entourage that he will spend the night outside the palace, so the servants will be left alone in the estate.
De Norton belonged to the Antillean noblesse de robe and enjoyed numerous privileges on the island, in addition to a large number of possessions and caring families.
In these conversations, no one used the mobile phone
I know what is your plan...
Katrin asks Tobey to accompany her to see her grandmother, in the middle of the night, but Tobey evades saying that he has to clean the stables...
Tobey begins to romance without any remorse
I won't tell, but I will participate...
Paparazzi
Barbara is left speechless when she sees how Tobey cheats on his beloved
Growing concern
This time Sean listens carefully to Bárbara's delusions, who explains to him without laughing out loud that she has been able to watch a 19th century soap opera on her digital camera. Sean doesn't give much credence to these statements, but he prefers to go along with it because he hasn't put his foot down for many weeks... He hopes that tonight there will be better luck than the two previous nights, but once again he is wrong...
The dark birds, a Chekhov´s gun...
Like the stormy skies and the night shots of the Moon, the dark birds are a kind of Chekhov's gun for Bellocchio in this work, and the function they fulfill is to generate unease in the viewer.
In particular, the pelican bears a slight resemblance to the extinct great auk, perhaps as a nod to the supposed curse of the specimen trapped in St. Kilda... which was executed after several days in captivity because the sailors were convinced that the great auk , a bird that lacked the ability to fly, was the source of its problems...
Sean goes to bed more and more, as a peaceful protest.
due to the love drought unilaterally imposed by his wife
However, Barbara's dreams are wet, and they reveal everything that the camera did not show her.
Breakfast at the Saint Francois marina
After gaining strength with an abundant continental breakfast, Barbara heads back to the ruins, but at the exit of the dock she runs into the mysterious big dark man... The camera is handled with great mastery in this unexpected encounter, which increases the unease of the viewer and that puts our beloved protagonist in check.
More than a clerical tunic, it looks like the raincoat from "I know what you did last summer..."
Poisoned eye contact
Partnership of Pesked Café (closed from 2006)
¿Adventure or obsession?
Bárbara's third visit to the ruins, far from falling into monotony, reveals new details about that case that increasingly has more enigmatic overtones... The faces of Bélmez or the light of Pardal are substitutes compared to the connection that is this investigative journalist experiencing the protagonists of that bloody tragedy...
A powerful anathema has been established on this island until the truth is revealed... Now Barbara visits one of those liminal spaces that disturb the conscience and delves into the rawest part of that story or legend.
In this new vision the face of the true murderer is revealed:
Katrin is a fratricide and a mariticide... and an unscrupulous false accuser...
Sean proves that he is a husband who knows how to listen
Barbara explains to Sean that she has discovered in a dream that Katrin killed her sister, Caroline and the cuckold Tobey, that although she was not loyal to her partner, she did not deserve a fatal stabbing.
The most important thing now is to clear the name of Mr. De Norton, who has remained under the slab of a life sentence for a multiple murder of three of his young lackeys, taking advantage of the nocturnal quiet of his mansion.
Night falls in Saint Francois and Barbara and Sean decide to grab takeaway pizzas. They were waiting for their brother but they haven't heard from him since the morning, so they didn't want to get involved in cooking without knowing the exact number of diners. The pizza slices are perfect because there is always some left over for the hungriest person, or for the next day's hangover.
Ready pizza delivery at ship
Not far from there, in the middle of the tropical jungle and under the full moon, something terrible has happened... The images speak for themselves. A succession of nefarious scenes will end up disturbing the mind of every viewer, even the most impassive... We do not delve into the filmography of the tropical Bellocchio, since in Paradise Island the terror is manifested in a much less explicit way and based on the all-encompassing control of the devil. Mystery Island is a film that tells us about ruthless madness and the most inconceivable imbalances of human beings.
With these two frames one thinks one hears an owl hooting...
Double kidnapping
Vincent and Sarah are the bargaining chip to get Barbara to stop investigating...
The night advances and Vincent without appearing
Deep in his heart, Sean considers that his brother is a troublemaker and a slob, and that he will surely be spending the night in a house of women of low reputation, so, although he worries slightly, he controls his emotions well. For her part, Bárbara transmits total tranquility because she not only senses it, but she knows for a fact that Vincent is a textbook whore.
As a good journalist, Barbara is one of those people with the gift of capturing the color of people's voices... which, together with the feminine intuition she has possessed since birth, makes her a perceptive profile detector and evaluator of the characters of people: the perfect investigative journalist.
Terrifying place and touches of gore. That is why it is a film not suitable for children under 18 years of age.
The night next to a disturbed person is not easy at all, but at last the clarity of the galicinio arrives
"You stay here as a retainer, and I'll go back to the ruins"
Barbara heads back to the cursed corner of the island of Guadeloupe, but not before telling her husband how to get there: following the road until you pass a warehouse... They are located, as the old saying goes, in Villatempujo, far from civilization, and, without indications, so it is almost impossible to find them unless you have received a tip.
This house scares fear...
"You´re in Carcosa now..."
"At this very moment, Sean realized that the whole thing
It had been a bad, horribly bad idea."
¡Get out of my property!
With the man dead, the way is free to hunt down the meddler...
A few minutes later, Barbara is face to face with the crazy man who, now, dressed in a vulgar halberd, seems like a truly dangerous being. Bellocchio has opened the cinematic Overton window to the maximum, and now the people in front of the screen are ready for anything.
Finally we hear this madman speak who suffers from puberphony or mutational falsetto. The custodian had a mission and that was to keep a family secret... His nonagenarian grandmother taught him an arcane lullaby on her deathbed when he was just an 8-year-old boy... in 1955, and she confessed that, in In 1885, when she was only 23 years old, she murdered her boyfriend, her sister and her best friend, incriminating another man who had been in prison until his death, three decades earlier. "Kill one man and you will be a murderer, kill 1 million and you will be a conqueror... my grandson. I stayed halfway, but the truth must never come to light..."
Last moments alive...
Barbara is ready to die... it's an obvious and very well executed cliffhanger, but first she tells him that she knows who he is. He is Jeremy, the last descendant of the Jenkinses, born in 1947... His grandmother was a late mother. Eaten by guilt, she only became pregnant at the age of 42 and gave birth to her mother in 1905, who also took a while to become pregnant until she was 42... Perhaps this succession of untimely pregnancies gave rise to her dementia problem, or perhaps the culprit was the grandmother with that terrible confession heard by a Jeremy who was only 8 years old.
"Someone once told me: time is a flat circle..."
"¡Nietzsche, shut the fuck up!"
Hurt but alive
Surely Nic Pizzolatto chose Matthew and Woody for True Detective, inspired by the performance of these two great actors in Mystery Island...
We now land in Budapest, where Bárbara is decorated for her article and she is rewarded with a new investigation in Mayotte... Her boyfriend doesn't really agree, but like a good whip, he will follow him until the end.
A man had been imprisoned for life for a crime he had not committed, while Katrin, the author of a triple homicide and who deserved to have appeared before an International Court alongside Putin, lived free until her death in 1955, at the age of 93 years old... Life is not fair to everyone, but Bellocchio has personally taken it upon himself to clear De Norton's name, with the invaluable help of the brave journalist Barbara.
THE END
RATING: 10/10
Info:
Private Tropical 25 "Mistery island"
Year: 2006
Genre of the plot: horror
Paradise destinarion: Guadeloupe
Actors: George Bull, Max Des Cortés, Katy Paro, Priva Ley, Isa Eyes, Diana Bold, Kevin Thong, Peter Venice, Kathy Undersun
Where can I find it: Private or Google
Link to spanish version
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