Goto, l'île d'amour (1969)
Directed by Walerian Borowczyk

Film Review

Directed by Polish émigré Walerian Borowczyk, Goto, l'île d'amour (a.k.a. Goto, Island of Love) was made in France during that momentous spring of 1968, and it bears witness to this fact in just about every frame.  A cinematic one off, it certainly captures the insurrectionary mood of the time, a madcap surreal fantasy with a strident anti-authoritarian message.  No doubt influenced by his own experiences in his Soviet-controlled homeland, Borowczyk gives us one of cinema's most scurrilous satires on the kind of closed, autocratic regimes that predominated in Eastern Europe at the time.

It is also a film that has something meaningful to say about the human condition, eloquent in its expression of the conflict between the opposing forces that govern our lives - the urge to submit to a higher authority and thereby lead a secure sheep-like existence, and that equally powerful inner drive to rebel and assert one's own individual identity, heedless of the chaos that may ensue.

This was the film that established Borowczyk as a serious independent filmmaker and further critical acclaim came with his subsequent Blanche (1971), Contes immoraux (1974) and La Bête (1975).  He had made one notable feature prior to this - the avant-garde animated feature Le Théâtre de monsieur et madame Kabal (1967), as well as several interesting short films.  It's tragic that Borowczyk's career thereafter suffered an ignominious decline, his talents squandered on such reviled fare as the soft-core porn disaster Emmanuelle 5 (1987).

Not only is Goto, l'île d'amour by far Borowczyk's most inspired and original film, it is also the one that shows the furthest departure from filmmaking convention.  Indeed, it appears to have far more in common with the independent strand of European silent cinema of the 1920s than with anything destined for a mainstream cinema audience of the late 1960s. Heavily influenced by surreal artists of past decades, Borowczyk quickly developed his own unique visual style, which tended to place inanimate objects in a scene on the same footing as the actors, leading to some weirdly memorable compositions.

Moodily photographed in grainy black and white (with a handful of brief colour shots inserted for emphasis), most of the film was shot in an abandoned factory, with sets imbued with the same artlessly bricolage quality of a Georges Méliès film of the early 1900s.  Static camera set-ups predominate for most of the film, giving way to some handheld camerawork only as the film heads towards its dramatic climax.

It is this bold and distinctive aesthetic that endows Goto with its crushing sense of Kafkaesque oppression, an impression that is darkened not lightened by its casual leanings towards the theatre of the absurd.  Here we have a frighteningly palpable taste of what life was like for ordinary people living in the totalitarian nightmares of the 20th century.  Handel's organ concerto is used throughout the film and lends a bleak poignancy to the stark images that Borowczyk conjures up for us, a gruesomely sordid world denuded not only of individual freedom but also any moral sense and artistic feeling.  The director's trademark eroticism (a creepily indulgent blend of seedy sensuality and voyeurism) is another important element of the film, underscoring the depravity of a totally stagnant society in which lust is the only vice that is tolerated by the state - a cheeky nod to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Goto's principal villain is played with worrying relish by Pierre Brasseur, one of the most impactful of French cinema's monstres sacrés.  Now in the twilight of his long and illustrious career, which included leading parts in such memorable classics as Les Enfants du paradis (1945) and Les Yeux sans visage (1960), Brasseur was often cast in larger-than-life roles that allowed for an uninhibited Grand Guignol theatricality.  As the monstrously wicked and perverse Goto III, Brasseur turns in a performance that is both hilarious and utterly chilling, his portrayal all too recognisable as a wry amalgam of Joseph Stalin and other contemporary Big Man nutters of a totalitarian persuasion.

As Grozo, the humble fly-catcher who threatens to overthrow the old order, Guy Saint-Jean makes a sympathetic oddball hero.  All but forgotten today, the actor enjoyed a brief period of celebrity, mainly through his appearances on French television in the serials Les Oiseaux rares (1969) and Les Rois maudits (1972).  Ginette Leclerc's inclusion in the cast list in a minor supporting role seems like a sick joke on the part of Borowczyk - a sly allusion perhaps to the actress's impossible-to-shake-off reputation as a willing Nazi collaborator during WWII.

When it was first seen in January 1969, in the aftermath of a year of massive social and political turbulence across the western world, Goto, l'île d'amour must have seemed a viscerally pertinent film.  A more overt incitement to rebel against the established order could not have been thrown at a French cinema audience, and sure enough the de Gaulle presidency ended four months later.  Fifty years on, Walerian Borowczyk's grimly comical vision of a willingly oppressed nation totally cut off from the rest of the world, governed by an inhuman monomaniac of the worst kind, has all too many present day counterparts.  Vladimir Putin's Russia and Kim Jong-un's North Korea are Goto, the Island of Love in all but name.

Film Synopsis

Goto is an island nation that has been cut off from the rest of the world for over a century.  Since the late 1800s, when a massive earthquake devastated the region, the indigenous population has lived in a totally closed society, governed by a succession of all-powerful despots, all named after this benighted land.  The latest ruler, Goto III, is a sadistic hedonist who revels in his absolute power, his every whim indulged by an unwaveringly submissive people.  The islanders spend their days labouring in the rock quarries, and take what pleasure they can from the state-run brothels.

Science and art have both been outlawed, with the result that progress and prosperity are non-existent - not that anyone seems to mind.  Everyone appears happy in his or her subservience to a monstrous, self-serving all-powerful autocrat, who likes nothing better than to attend a good public execution.  Goto III is not ignorant of the fact that his unimaginably beautiful wife Glossia has been pursuing a passionate love affair with her riding instructor, a handsome young military man, and even derives considerable gratification by spying on their frequent amorous escapades.

Glossia acquires another admirer, Grozo, when she intervenes at his execution.  Not only does Goto offer Grozo a full pardon, he also appoints him to the privileged role of official dog feeder and fly catcher.  The former criminal repays his master by falling madly in love with his wife.  On learning that Glossia plans to elope with Gono, Grozo contrives to overthrow the country's unwitting ruler, thereby unleashing a course of events that will change Goto forever...