Underplayed Gems

Treasure Island (1985)

Treasure Island poster
Original title
L'Île au trésor
Directed by
Raúl Ruiz
Genre
adventure film, pirate film, treasure hunt film
Country
Chile, France, United States
Runtime
1h 55m
Rating
6.4 of 10 from 11 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

Raúl Ruiz adapts Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure into a complex and dreamlike puzzle. A young boy joins a pirate crew on a treasure hunt, but the story keeps shifting into strange and playful detours.

dreamlikewhimsicalplayfulsurrealpuzzle-likeslow-burnunconventionalcerebral

What happens

Treasure Island (French: L'île au trésor) is a 1986 fabulist metafiction film directed by Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz, which was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. French, British and American companies funded Ruiz's obscure and complex adaptation of the classic 1883 coming-of-age adventure novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island stars a young Melvil Poupaud, a familiar face in Ruiz's filmography, alongside popular veteran actors such as Martin Landau, Anna Karina and Jean-Pierre Léaud. The film's play on the traditional narrative of an iconic and frequently dramatized story is very representative of Ruiz' oneiric approach and style. Ruiz takes his fondness for cartography to a new level with Stevenson's narrative, making the book into a map to the treasure in this rendition. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.