L'incroyable histoire de l'Île de la Rose

Aesthetically and technically speaking Sydney Sibilia is one of the few directors who manages to make a homegrown film at the level of other international productions and therefore addressed to a much wider audience, not limiting himself to the Italian one as most of the productions of the our country do. "L'incredibile storia dell'isola delle rose" is yet another confirmation of this: special effects, direction and, in particular, cinematography are of excellent quality, an example for all those filmmakers who want to change italian cinema to make it visible and appreciable in the rest of the world. Unfortunately, however, the screenplay does not propose the same quality, between forced and banal dialogues, poorly characterized characters and a fluctuating rhythm, everything that makes this (unjustly omitted from the history books) story wonderfully interesting is missing: the sense of affront and rebellion towards a system that seemed untouchable but also the absurdity, the incredible passion, the irony and at the same time the humanity behind it and its characters, are almost never perceived. The film works as a medium-level comedy-drama and manages to entertain and intrigue but is often unable to tell the facts as they deserved to be told, giving them the more than necessary political, historical and social importance.

The script is not perfect. And, like all European movies, it is rather slow. But it's an amazing story of freedom right from the middle of the Evil Empire. Kings, Crusades, World Wars, and a handful of individuals looking for freedom. And 2020 is the probably the best time to launch this story.

This film has great esthetics, probably watchable on that alone, but as a whole is a mess. The narrative is so drawn out, with at least a dozen repetitions of the same joke of incredulity on the part of staid bureaucrats, that about 30 minutes in, you'd be better of stopping viewing.

Living not more than 30km from the place where 'Insulo de la Rozoj' was built, I was always interested in a movie depicting its history...This one leans too much on the comedic side (maybe to avoid a historic drama tone), leaving to the (skilled) actors the task of saving characters' depth. The technical details and photography are indeed very enjoyable, maybe it's just a bit noisy.

The majority of critics have no clue about the significance of the events carefully crafted in this truly Italian opereta. I was 18 when this happened and it looked absolutely insane looking at this from America. Fortunately I speak Italian and actors are just fantastic. I will give special credits to Francois Cluzet, one of my favorite French actors. The events are those that happened that year of revolts in France and elsewhere, while this engineer Rosa makes the impossible to pass the same message with technology.