Ciel Rouge

In 1946 in Vietnam, at a French army base in the jungle, Philippe, a young recruit (played by Cyril Descours), has to guard a female Viet Minh prisoner, called Thi (Audrey Giacomini).

Philippe had signed up to bring peace to an unknown country of dense forests and spectacular mountains but his ideals collapse when he is told he must torture and kill a young Vietnamese woman fighting for independence.

There were "slips, surprises", and at editing, long sequences of sometimes fifteen minutes, giving real "cinematic matter which one could sculpt, keeping unexpected camera movements".

[6] The music in the film includes Metamorphosis Two by Philip Glass, Should we go home by Ellen Allien, Dusty by Ez3kiel, and Winterreise and Drei Schneewalzer Teil I by Uwe Schmidt.

[2] The director "captures vertiginous or confined landscapes, swarms of butterflies, lakes surrounded by mountains", but the film is also the portrait of "a man who decides to follow his passions to the very end: one can either see it as an act of great bravery or folly....".

"[12] Another review noted that "... Ciel rouge examines the psychological devastation of war and the limits of patriotic commitment",[12] while another commented that "Audrey Giacomini and Cyril Descours display an equal intensity at the same time as undeniable sensuality".

[2] François Rieux added, "Between shoulder-held camera and flights of Steadycam redolent of Terrence Malick... this is an atypical war film and a superb erotic romance.

"[12] Vignaux-Laurent places the romantic episode in the context of a deliberate return to "an original dream - the restraint of Adam and Eve or that of Paul et Virginie", but surrounded by the war.

[11] At the start the action is both slow and fitful; between sequences of torture, the woman prisoner reads a book while junior officers play ping-pong, and there are long silences.

[11] The first kiss of Thi and Philippe happens in a tunnel under bombardment as a reaction to the panic of being shut in; thus the film is structured as a counterpoint of war and peace: torture, passing through a massacred village, automatic weapons; against books, rice, the lake episode, radiant dawns.