Wampum Hunters

Neon arteries pulse beneath asphalt skin as the film’s prologue drags us through a sleepless metropolis where electric billboards sneer at passers-by; then, like a magician yanking the tablecloth, the screen rips us across latitudes and drops us onto an island that cartographers forgot. Volcanic sand hisses under the weight of moonlight while drumbeats detonate inside a jungle cathedral of banyan and balsa. Here, a coterie of young women—skin glazed with turmeric and crushed shell—gyrate in spirals that mock every Parisian ballet academy. Our two urban stowaways, decked in tattered tuxedo remnants, watch from the shadows: one a wiry charmer whose grin could pick a lock, the other a stoic slab of cynicism nursing a hangover from the civilised world. The tribal court, presided over by a chieftain whose headdress of starfish and shark teeth radiates deranged sovereignty, decrees that the glibber of the pair must wed the princess—an apple-shaped force of nature with a laugh like a cracked tuba. Repulsed yet gallant, he chooses pyro-matrimony over connubial doom, only to wriggle free as flames lick his boots. Reunited with his brooding companion, the duo hatch an aquatic exodus: they will shepherd the island’s loveliest back to Manhattan by strolling along the ocean floor, pearl-laden lungs and coral crowns their only luggage. The curtain falls on a hallucinatory procession of silhouettes vanishing into turquoise dusk, bubbles rising like champagne gossip behind them.