TREASURE OF THE BITCH ISLANDS (1990, F.J. Ossang, A+)

This is from an e-mail I sent to a friend:

I just watched TREASURE OF THE BITCH ISLANDS. It is very interesting. I tried to "follow the story" in the first half hour or so, then I gave up focusing on the story, because by then I realized this film is not a normal sci-fi.

The images in this film are quite stunning. After the first viewing, I don't know what this film means. Does this film have some social meanings? Anyway, I like its strangeness. In a way, this film reminds me of THE DESERT OF THE TARTARS (1976, Valerio Zurlini), because

1.The hero or the group of heroes didn't succeed in what he/they want to accomplish at all. These films are the opposite of "success story". I like it very much that the characters in TREASURE seem to travel all the time, but they seem to go nowhere, and they don't "move forward" at all.

2."The enemies" in these two films are "unseen"--the cannibals in TREASURE OF THE BITCH ISLANDS" and the Tartars in DESERT OF THE TARTARS.

I also like some "obvious storytelling" techniques in TREASURE very much, such as the separating into different acts, and the different voices which narrate the film.

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Mubarak Ali wrote about this film here:
http://supposedaura.blogspot.com/2007/02/place-with-no-memory-of-itself.html