Suddenly Alone: A Breathtaking Island Epic (review)
Following a couple shipwrecked on an island, Thomas Bidegain creates a solid thriller, brilliantly performed, which links the survival of love and physical resilience.
Reinventing the stories of castaways is not an easy thing, but Thomas Bidegain has rightly chosen to imbue himself with the notions of a clean slate and a new beginning to succeed in his version of the genre. Adapting a novel by the navigator Isabelle Autissier, the filmmaker (screenwriter ofA prophet and of Dheepan who is making his second feature film after The Cowboys) recounts the setbacks of Ben and Laura, a French couple for 5 years, who are traveling around the world by boat.
After venturing to an island near the Antarctic coast, the two lovebirds find themselves stranded in this depopulated territory as winter approaches due to a storm. Thanks to a realistic treatment of anxiety and danger, Suddenly alone offers a brilliant setting for its two remarkable actors, Gilles Lellouche and Mélanie Thierry, unique members of the cast who make this island epic deeply gripping. Linking the struggle for physical survival and the exploration of intimate feelings finally laid bare, Bidegain shows how this couple – who suddenly discover their faults and weaknesses – must take inventory of their romantic relationship to try to resist a trying nature .
The narration thus alternates, with unstoppable fluidity, between moments of despair and bursts of energy, so much so that this thriller ends up like its characters by focusing on a single goal: deploying the necessary resources to find in the heart of adversity a last glimmer of hope and human warmth in a world that is beginning to lack it. For an exciting result.
Of Thomas Bidegain With Gilles Lellouche, Mélanie Thierry. Duration 1h50. Released December 6, 2023
