Bertrand Mandico's Les Garcon Sauvages is a mind blowing feature debut. If Mandico's transgressive sexual fantasy is ultimately onanistic, that may be his intent. Whatever meaning there is to be gleaned from this singular film, Mandico displays an impressive amount of visual imagination. The film concerns a group of unbridled adolescents who, as punishment for torturing their teacher, are sent on a long sea voyage with a sadistic captain who intends to reform his charges. He takes them to a mysterious island where they are able to enjoy erotic hedonism in an exotic setting. However, the island causes peculiar changes to these wild boys.
Mandico foregrounds sexual fluidity by casting young women as the horny and violent boys. The players, with the aid of computerized vocal pitch control, are up to the challenge, rendering the macho antics of the boys as very much a swaggering act. There is a mysterious bejeweled deity named Trevor who transmits messages to the boys as they sleep. These sequences are in vivid color, while most of the film is in bleached out black and white. The net effect is that of a queer(er) Guy Maddin, especially his more bizarre narrative films such as The Saddest Music in the World and Twilight of the Ice Nymphs. Like Maddin, Mandico puts a modern, avant-garde spin on silent and early sound film imagery. Also like Maddin, Mandico's work verges on camp. Les Garcon Sauvages seems like Captains Courageous as remade by Bunuel and Genet.
If there is a moral to this whacked out film, it is that young men must get in touch with their feminine side in order to become more integrated and mature individuals. Fittingly for the post-modernist he is, Mandico has woven bits and pieces of older films within the flotsam and jetsam of his story: L'Age D'Or, Zardoz, A Clockwork Orange, The Night of the Hunter, Robinson Crusoe, Lord of the Flies, Valhalla Rising, Planet of the Vampires and numerous B horror and sci-fi flicks from the 50s and 60s. Though a striking work, Les Garcon Sauvages is more geared towards film aficionados and midnight movie fans than the general film audience. (3/11/19)
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