Scintillating and ambient, director Jan-Ole Gerster’s Islands moves like one type of film before undressing to reveal itself to be something more gut-wrenching and hard-hitting. On the surface, it’s a sunbaked murder mystery wrapped in the vestments of an erotic thriller, focusing on a local who gets caught up with a free-flowing couple from out of town with unintended consequences. While the “whodunit” aspect remains a compelling narrative throughline, it becomes a film about the ways we erroneously (but understandably) fashion the people in our lives into idols of liberation and view their presence as a way to escape our own monotony. Making sultry use out of its resort setting and boasting characters who we feel drawn to but can never quite trust, Islands is a destination worth your cinematic time, the only pain of its viewing coming from when you realize that the mesmerizing journey you’ve been taken on is over in two hours and some change.
On the surface, what I’m articulating might sound sexier than the actual way Islands transpires. This is a very patient film, one that understands hinting at carnality and teasing the release of pent-up emotion is far more enticing than actually showing consummation on-screen. It moves with a deceptively stilted pace that one can mistake for lethargy, but in actuality, it's calculated, its lugubriousness being a sleight of hand for its deeper ruminations around desire and how it frees and shackles.
This all works mainly due to its central character, Tom (Sam Riley), a tennis instructor who has lived in Fuerteventura, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, for many years. His role is to give lessons to the many tourists who commission him, and you can get a sense that he holds a resentment for their transience, their ability to flit about while he has to remain moored in paradise. It’s not that the island is without its libations or temptations to rapturously give oneself to. The opening scenes of Islands showcase Tom in the throes of parties, hooking up with strangers, drinking, and taking breaks in between those activities by lying in the sand. The steady stream of new bodies means that, in theory, he should never be bored, but he seems only hollowed out. There’s a tangible energy that courses through his face, his sullen eyes hidden behind sunglasses, as he mimes a facsimile of energy while he plays tennis. It’s easy to play bored in a histrionic manner and far more difficult to convey something like longing and disappointment, but Riley is masterful, showing that on this island, indeed, Tom is an island all to his own. All play and no work has made him a dull boy.
Things change for him, though, with the arrival of Anne (Stacy Martin), when she and her husband Dave (Jack Farthing) ask for their seven-year-old son Anton (Dylan Torrells) to receive private lessons. As we see in the opening scenes, Sam has a fondness for beautiful out-of-towners, and Anne certainly fits that bill, but there’s something more alluring about her he can’t quite shake. There’s a chemistry between them that is palpable but hidden, at least to Dave, a gregarious businessman who feels both like Tom’s foil and counterpart: he loves to party and clearly sees his marriage to Anne and his child as a sort of shackle compared to the glory days when he was a bachelor. While Tom starts just giving lessons, he quickly becomes enmeshed with their family, and he feels himself being pulled further and further into their orbit.
Not too long after Tom has become a fixture of the family, Dave goes missing, with theories ranging from whether he’s tragically died or run off. An investigation kicks off to find him, with Anne being visibly distressed and Tom stepping in as a surrogate father to care for Anton. As the investigation progresses and produces a few leads, the film gets into more interesting and thornier territory. While outwardly, Anne and Tom are committed to finding Dave, their inner lives are more complex. The two get closer while searching for the very person that, if he came back alive, would threaten to tear the fantasy of their union apart.
Martin, as the film’s functional femme fatale, adds so much more to what would be expected of the role. Like the vapor rising from a lake during wintertime, there’s a mystery to her that can’t be pinned down. You never get the sense that she’s able to be grasped, even as she remains remarkably composed and present in the scenes she’s in. It’s a testament to Martin’s talents that she’s able to wear a character’s vulnerabilities so openly and yet give a hint that, for all her honesty, there’s something still hidden.
Islands does occasionally move a bit too lethargically for its own good, as the majority of the film’s action follows Tom, Anton, and Anne being brought in at various points to determine where Dave has gone. We know there can be only one answer (Is Dave alive or dead?), but it's in those moments of protocol that the film is at its most poignant. Its arresting power lies in its mediation, and the ways it flits between the possibility of renewal that Tom and Anne seem to find in each other and the understanding that such a liberation would come at the cost of something more sinister. It’s natural to want to be reborn every once in a while, but Islands, which inhales and exhales with such a wickedly seductive tempo, proves that there’s nothing more dangerous than thinking you can start over without consequences.
Islands is now available to rent/purchase on digital.
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