The Red Turtle Page #8

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But maybe he's in a deeper sleep.

The man hears heavenly music in the middle of which a distant cry calls him.

It's time. He sees the incandescent white light of the sky. He's dissolving into

this whiteness.

But the cry becomes insistent. The man opens one eye.

He sees his son in the distance. Is it his son or a mirage?

He waves vaguely at him, which is a big mistake. He has let go of the

bamboo. Nothing is holding him up anymore.

The image of his son above the water appears for a moment, then the sea

floods the screen.

The man sinks like a stone.

He doesn't resist anymore. He doesn't have enough strength to.

Sinking, that's his destiny.

A turtle swims up under the water at full speed.

It slides under the man's body.

Another turtle appears, then another, then the boy.

Together, they take the man's body to the surface. They bring him near his

bamboo and put him down. The man seems more dead than alive.

Yet he is alive.

Later.

On the coral reef, the mother is watching and waiting like a sentinel.

She sees them.

She jumps headlong into the water.

She hugs her husband tightly.

The island is devastated.

Three figures move slowly in the middle of what was the bamboo forest.

The son supports his father, helping him walk.

The mother looks sadly at the landscape around her, then takes hold of her

husband's hand.

In the sky, the birds have returned.

Later.

It's the end of the day.

The son guts fish, humming softly to himself with his mouth shut.

The mother joins him. She sits down next to him and prepares the evening

meal with him.

The father is lying down a few feet away from them.

He sits up.

He's exhausted, but he already seems to have recovered some of his

strength.

The family has found refuge at the top of the island which wasn't affected by

the wave.

All three of them are there. Together. Alive.

Fade to black

III. 5. After the tsunami.

In the following days or weeks, the family gets down to cleaning the island.

Things need rebuilding.

(These short sequences can be harmonized by some music which would

prolong and accentuate the melody hummed by the son during the previous

scene.)

The first scene takes place near the pond.

It's a day or two after the disaster.

It's very sunny once more.

The waterhole is almost completely overrun by debris of all kinds. You can

barely see where it starts and ends.

The son is in the water, taking out the biggest branches.

The mother and father have a net which they use from time to time for

fishing and which we saw them making on the beach the day the son found

the bottle.

They are on either side of the stretch of water and skim the surface with the

net to pick up as many leaves and debris as possible.

A few days or weeks later.

In the bamboo forest.

On one side of the path, the mother picks up sticks and rhizomes and makes

neat piles. She seems to be using considerable energy.

On the other side, the father and son carry an enormous bundle of bamboo

sticks as best they can. They take it to the beach, to the end of what was a

vast bamboo forest and which is now a sort of open field, dotted with shoots

a few inches high.

Birds fly past in the sky, above the island's landscape which has changed

quite a lot since the catastrophe.

A few days later.

On the beach. It's the middle of the day.

There are two big fires burning, quite far from each other.

The father is in charge of the one further away, the son the nearer one. The

mother comes and goes between the beach and the hill, bringing new debris

to fuel the fires.

The father and son throw everything that can be burned on the fire: bamboo

debris, rhizomes, dead leaves and branches from bushes. They don't really

have any tools to get the fire going or to contain it. When necessary, they

use bamboo sticks which they regularly wet in seawater.

The son goes over to his gigantic fire to throw on a new load of plant debris.

He is dripping in sweat.

End of the music?

(or at the start of the next scene)

Later. Near the pond.

The vegetation all around still hasn't grown back, but the pond itself is

looking in better shape.

The son is kneeling beside the water.

He cups some water in his hands and splashes it on his face.

Then, he goes closer and drinks out of his hands. That's when he sees

something at the bottom of the water which has become more or less

transparent again.

It sparkles brightly.

We move in closer.

The bottle is at the bottom of the pond, half-buried in the muddy earth, near

an aquatic plant. Tiny tadpoles wriggle past.

The son's hand enters the water, grabs the bottle, and brings it up to the

surface.

Rapid fade to black.

Another day.

On the beach, there is no sign of the big bonfires anymore.

It's late afternoon.

The son is sitting at the top of the beach, his bottle next to him. He lies

down.

The son is woken by a distant rumbling.

He jumps to his feet and looks at the sea.

Yes, a wave is approaching. But it's not as high and is going more slowly than

the one from the first tsunami.

The boy enters the water. He goes to meet the wave. Slowly. As if it were the

only thing to do.

The wave seems almost motionless. Waiting.

But as soon as the boy enters it, it rises, like a long intake of breath.

It rises higher and higher. The boy is first lifted up by the wave, then soon,

he is swallowed up by it.

He continues to rise up inside the water, then reappears almost at the top.

Just then, the wave stops. It's perfectly motionless. There doesn't seem to be

any danger.

From the top of the motionless wave, the boy peers at the beach: he sees his

parents far below, looking tiny. He waves at them, and they respond almost

joyfully.

Then the son turns and looks at the horizon.

When the boy wakes up, he realizes that it was of course just a dream. The

sun has set.

The young man doesn't really knew where he is or in what state of

consciousness. What a strange dream!

He gets up and goes over to the shore. But everything is calm. The water

caresses his bare feet.

The father's outline appears behind what remains of the curtain of bamboos.

He was probably coming to see his son, but something in the young man's

posture stops him. He stands in the shade of a bamboo and looks at his son

from behind, staring at the horizon. Just like the mother, nearly twenty years

before, watched the father casting his raft out to sea.

The son turns away and starts to walk slowly along the shore, staring

vacantly, lost in thought.

The son has turned inland.

He walks slowly, calmly, as if it helps him think. He crosses the field of young

bamboo shoots, looking up at the sky. The Milky Way looks beautiful this

evening.

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