Islands review - sunshine noir serves an ace

From its ambiguous opening shot onwards, writer/director Jan-Ole Gerster’s Islands is a tricksy animal, which doesn’t just keep you guessing about its characters and plot, but about what kind of film it is we’re watching.

It takes its time before tiptoeing into noir territory, specifically the kind that swaps nocturnal shadows for sun-bleached locations, where characters are led astray less by racy dialogue and treachery than heat-induced lethargy, tinged with lust. 

But Gerster (Oh Boy) also offers intimations of Antonioni’s great existential mystery, l’Avventura, along with something much more accessible: the simple tale of a man who’s allowed himself to languish in mediocrity. What it is, ultimately, resides with the individual viewer; and that itself is remarkably refreshing these days. 

The excellent, but too-rarely showcased Sam Riley (Control, On the Road, pictured below) stars as Tom, the tennis coach at a resort hotel on the island of Fuerteventura in the Canaries. Tom is handsome, methodically charming and a talented player, but he’s been on the island too long, coasting between easy lessons for the tourists and nightly drinking binges in the local nightclub, peppered by one-night stands. It's one thing visiting a sunny resort for a week or two of mindless excess; something else deciding to live there. Tom has given up, lost his way. The film’s opening, striking image, of a prostate Tom, head down in the sand, establishes the sense of nothing being exactly what it seems. The assumption is that this is the middle of nowhere, of a person stranded in the desert. But then he picks himself up, dusts himself off and takes a few steps towards his car, which has been just out of shot. It’s simply the morning after another bender.

It’s a nice sleight of hand, and also the establishing shot of Tom’s character; his waking up anywhere but his own bed will become a recurring motif. 

But then a family arrives at the resort and immediately dents Tom’s routine. When Anne (Stacy Martin, Nymphomaniac, The Brutalist) declines to put her son Anton (Dylan Torrell) into the kids’ tennis session, insisting on a one-on-one, Tom grabs the extra cash and, perhaps, the chance to see mum again. But it’s dad who turns up for the second lesson. And while Anne is enigmatic, full of alluringly loaded glances and pregnant pauses, Dave (Jack Farthing, Spencer, pictured below, left, with Martin and Riley) is all maddening male ego – in everyone’s face and making his insecurities – not least those with his wife – uncomfortably apparent. 

Nevertheless, Tom embraces the whole family, using his hotel contacts to secure them a better room, offering his day off to give them a tour of the island. He particularly bonds with the boy. There are already questions being raised. Why is a man who has no real friends (other than a local couple who run a camel farm for tourists) and is extremely self-contained devoting himself to these newcomers? Why do people on the island think they’ve seen Anne before? Might she have been another drunken, and forgotten conquest? And if so, what does she want, now, with Tom? 

Then, after insisting that Tom take him to the nightclub, the chaotic David disappears. And the mystery deepens.

“Did we pick up any wasted Brits last night?” one of the local cops asks of a colleague. The locals have seen it all before, or think they have. The longer David isn’t found, the more suspicions turn both to the wife, and to the man who has become inseparable alongside her. 

Gerster is having fun, playing with archetypes: the inspector from out of town, casting a shrewder eye on the attractive couple now in front of him; the tennis pro, often serving as a shady lover or handsome fall guy; and of course, the femme fatale, a suggestion that grows as Stacy Martin subtly and playfully drops some of Anne’s guardedness. 

Meanwhile, the hint of Antonioni comes from the volcanic island setting, beautifully shot by Juan Sarmiento, who conveys languor and strangeness, his images continuing to tease with false meaning. The existential tint over proceedings includes the feeling that the search for a missing man is its least interesting element.

It’s a decidedly slow burn, with not a great deal actually happening, but it never loses the attention, its centre beautifully held by Riley, who with his sad eyes and whisky voice does a great job of conveying a lost soul in the last chance saloon.

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