The Red Turtle Page #6

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The boy comes back up to the surface for air, then dives again to join them.

...

Later in the day.

On the beach, the father is worried. Night is falling and the child still isn't

back.

He peers at the horizon, but can't see him.

The father joins his wife a little higher up on the beach. He gestures

expansively; he seems agitated, worried, feverish.

The mother is calmer. She looks out to sea, shading her eyes with one hand.

Confident that the boy will be back. It's just a matter of time.

The father decides to go off in search of him. Anything rather than wait, not

doing anything. He unties a little raft which they probably use for fishing and

which is by the water's edge, and sets off. He has a long bamboo stick to

make the flimsy boat move.

From the beach, the mother watches the father on his raft. He is going past

the coral reef.

...

From the sea, the boy, who is swimming toward the island, sees his father in

the distance and gestures to him joyfully.

The father's raft and the boy reach other. The father yells at his son. He

grabs him and pulls him onto the raft. The boy looks a bit sheepish.

The raft returns to the beach.

The boy is sitting cross-legged at the front. He turns his back on his father

who is maneuvering with his stick at the rear.

Rapid fade to black

A new day dawns on the island. It's a calm, carefree day.

Two birds fly together.

Elsewhere in the sky, a bat flies towards the island, towards us.

It's a male. He approaches a big tree from the branch of which a female bat

is hanging upside down, legs in the air.

The male lands beside her. The female moves away a bit.

The male flies off. He hovers around the female, then lands much nearer her

this time. The female doesn't move away.

They are almost touching, their heads upside down.

...

Another day.

In the field near the pond.

It has been raining, but it has stopped now.

A raindrop slides down a leaf and falls onto the wet grass.

We move in closer.

Two snails are on the ground, on bright green leaves which are still glistening

with moisture. They are big snails, a bit like sea snails.

One of the snails sticks to the other's shell. A sort of trunk comes out of its

body and inserts itself under the other's shell.

They mate.

Another day, or later on.

A mating ritual is conducted in the waters of the pond.

A male frog hops into the pond and joins a female frog.

She watched the male coming, but takes off as soon as he reaches her.

The male swims after her. The muscles of their back legs relax in almost

synchronous movements.

Then suddenly, the female slows down.

The male turns, joins her, and presses tight against her.

They swim together, clinging to each other.

Another day. Or the same one.

The son is sitting by himself at the top of the beach.

It's the middle of the afternoon.

Two years have passed since his underwater excursion. He is now 16.

He is sculpting a piece of wood with a sharp stone. But he stops,

daydreaming. He seems melancholy.

Further away, on the beach, two crabs chase each other.

Then they press themselves against one another.

Later. It's the end of the day.

The boy is still in the same place, more or less in the same position. Only the

daylight has changed. He can't have moved for hours.

He picks up the bottle next to him, has a drink of water, then raises the

bottle in front of his eyes. He has fun, making the horizon coincide with the

water level in the bottle.

Fade to black

III. 3. The tsunami – The family separated.

It's an ordinary day.

The whole family is picking up shellfish off the coral reef. The son is now a

young man, he's 18.

The atmosphere is strange, electric.

Birds whirl in the sky.

Kneeling by a rock, the boy watches them, shading his eyes with one hand.

Then he stands up, puts the shellfish he's picked up in their basket, grabs the

almost empty bottle next to it and heads for the beach to fill it. He crosses

the stretch of water which links the coral reef to the island, a little surprised

to see that the water level seems to have gone down.

The mother, also kneeling down, watches him go away without giving it a

second thought, then looks up at the sky. A flock of birds now fly past,

cawing.

The boy has reached the beach.

He goes to the waterhole, also looking up at the birds as they fly past him.

The edge of the water has shifted.

It's very strange. It seems that it is ebbing very slowly toward the open sea.

Three or four crabs are there, on the wet sand.

They look at the sea, then they too move back slowly, or disappear into their

holes. Once the birds have gone past, silence descends again. We hear more

clearly than ever the tiny sounds of the crabs' legs on the sand.

The son strides along, heading for the pond, walking alongside the field

which borders the bamboo forest. Suddenly, he stops and listens.

We can't hear anything. The sound of the sea has grown fainter, giving way

to a big lull, as if nature had fallen silent. The young man looks up at the sky,

then carries on walking, perplexed.

On the coral reef, the father has stood up.

With hands on hips, he watches in surprise the stretch of water by the beach,

the level of which has gone down again. The mother, who is still kneeling and

hard at work, stands up to join him as the father walks a few paces to get a

better view.

There are only a few inches of water left. The fish are almost high and dry.

The father snatches one.

The mother who has stayed on the coral reef watches him, then looks up at

the sky. We hear a sort of rumbling, like a continuous but very distant bass.

A storm somewhere far away? But the sky is clear.

Now the woman turns to the sea. She looks at the horizon, her face worried,

perplexed, watchful. The horizon doesn't look quite normal. There is a darker

grey line between the sky and the sea.

The son is now near the pond. He plunges his bottle in the water, pricking up

his ears as he fills it. Something is wrong. A distant, incomprehensible sound,

like a rumbling which keeps getting louder. It seems to be coming from the

beach, from the sea.

The young man turns to the path he came from. The noise keeps growing,

the rumbling is getting closer. The sound slowly gets louder as he puts his

bottle near the pond, then he starts running to the beach as fast as he can.

The mother's face looks terror-stricken.

It's a wave, a tsunami.

The wave is there on the horizon, distant yet close. Still distant yet far too

close. When you can see it, it's already almost too late.

The woman runs as if possessed. She grabs the man by the arm as she goes

past. He starts running too, though he doesn't really understand what the

danger is.

They run on the wet sand, between puddles which are all that remains of the

stretch of water which linked the coral reef to the beach.

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