Get the latest gossip
‘Sukkwan Island’ Review: A Melancholic Father-Son Bonding Tale That Takes an Increasingly Harsh Turn
Vladimir de Fontenay's 'Sukkwan Island' is intelligently performed by Swann Arlaud and Woody Norman, but an awkward adaptation of David Vann's book.
So it makes sense that “ Sukkwan Island,” French writer-director Vladimir de Fontenay ‘s handsome, elegiac take on Vann’s tale, specifically adapts the one segment of the book that is told in the third person: a nearly self-contained novella that finds the author standing outside his own experience, but not outside a grief that pervades both memory and imagination. Tom and Roy are tentative around each other, but not hostile, as de Fontenay’s adaptation honors Vann’s avoidance of well-worn clichés regarding absent fathers and angry adolescent sons: It’s moving to watch them observe each other, testing out unfamiliar gestures of empathy and affection, and sometimes falling short. Bracketing this increasingly devolving scenario are scenes of the adult Roy (Ruaridh Mollica, “Sebastian”) visiting the cabin a decade later, burdened by inferred grief and trauma — an addition to Vann’s story that cues the film’s abruptly recalibrated perspective, but doesn’t quite match the stark weight of the book’s terse, heartsore prose.
Or read this on Variety
