Tuvalu is the name of an island which Anton dreams of escaping to -- a dream which seems unlikely to come true, given that he works as the maintenance man at the dilapidated and largely deserted pool owned by his father. Located in the middle of nowhere, the pool has been going out of business for years, but Anton goes to elaborate measures to convince his blind father that the pool is still popular and frequented. When Anton's entrepreneur brother Gregor hatches a scheme to have the pool razed
and sold off as real estate, Anton must enlist the help of the few regulars who support the pool. Banding together, the group attempts to save the pool from a health inspection that will put it out of business, while Anton tries to win the love of his longtime friend Eva.
The kind of movie that might one day find itself in the hall of fame of surreal movie weirdness alongside cult favorites like Eraserhead, Delicatessen and the avant-garde frolics of Guy Maddin.
Fetishistic in its bemusement with gadgetry and painstaking in its slapstick-meets-high-emotion construction... Tuvalu is a decently engaging high farce, even if its influences are roundly on display.
What a wonderful movie! yes, it's like Metropolis remade by Guy Maddin as a Jean-Pierre Jeunet love story, but somehow it's so much more than that. Every directorial choice Helmer made, from the perfect casting, to keeping the dialog gestural and nearly non-verbal, to the childishly simple plot, to filming in sepiatone
with hand-tinted accents, adds up to pure cinematic magic. A movie that reminds you why you love movies.
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