Really a slow burn and hypnotic film about the aftermath of colonialism. Honestly I watched it as a deadpan farce about the French mind. Each scene offers a separate facet of the main character's absurd delight in making pronouncements about what he calls "our" island while the residents give him polite smiles. The lush backdrop and the indigenous people--how did they film this to look so dreamlike?--just keeps asserting their immense presence that then brings the characters to scale. Its splendid colors and purity by turns made the occupiers drunk with romanticism, relieve their guilt by allowing them to claim it as part theirs, and comically mocks the overactive and polarizing nature of their European mindset as human greed for power and paranoia, the buffoons stuck amidst the people who have been there an exponentially longer time. If you thought it was going to be an action movie and dislike slow burn movies, you won't like it...though why be mad it's not French fries when it's a lake of de la puree?

A John Le Carre thriller drained of urgency and clarity, which actually works better than you might think. The languid pace is genuinely hypnotic.

Amazing film about the myth that colonization ended when it takes the form of tourism, military exploits, hedonism, land deals, drugs, illusions of freedom and power, cultural domination over the indigenous, a world of make believe. The colors and photography in this film are extraordinary. The scene of the boating competition on giant waves is truly thrilling. Nature is a major star in this film. Surrealism, realism, and critique merge. A cinematic classic. One of the most intelligent and powerful films of 2023.

This movie is terrible. The plot is weak, script contrived, the acting unbelievable. And the scenes are endless and pointless; dull conversation, slow, going nowhere fast. Someone must have thought they were making art. Fail.

Grass growing for 2-1/2 hours would have been more exciting. You're welcome.

Absolutely brilliant. Best cinematic experience of the fantasy state of leaders, the vileness of colonialism/post colonialism: people as objects not human. If you want to understand Johnson, Truss, Trump, this is the film to be patient with and watch. You will be rewarded. If you are greedy, you will hate this film