Islands: When Lost Souls Sabotage the Best-Laid Vacation Plans

By Kim Hughes

Rating: A

For a film where not a lot happens, and what does happen happens very slowly, Islands is strangely gripping. That could be the hypnotic effect of its endlessly sun-drenched Canary Island setting, as writer-director Jan-Ole Gerster dips his audience in the languorous pace of a holiday destination in this low-boil psychological drama.

Islands opens with a man facedown in the sand at dawn. The man is Tom (Sam Riley, Ian Curtis in Control), a onetime serious tennis contender sidelined by an injury, now impassively offering lessons to guests at a chic-chic Fuerteventura island resort. It won’t be the last time we see Tom awaking to the agony of the morning after the night before.

For a guy living in a vacationer’s paradise (and breaking boundaries by sleeping with guests), Tom doesn’t seem very happy. Perennially T-shirted and sunglassed, he drinks in the day and drugs at night, often partying into the wee hours at Waikiki, the local disco. Of the nightclub’s name, it will later be noted that, “Even in a place like this, people want to pretend they’re somewhere else.”

One day at the courts, Tom is approached by Anne (Stacy Martin), a vacationer staying at the resort with her husband Dave (Jack Farthing) and their seven-year-old son Anton (Dylan Torrell). Anne wants Tom to practice with Anton, a good kid with whom Tom bonds. Those lessons quickly draw Tom into Anne and Dave’s orbit.

Over dinner in town one night, Tom offers to show the family around the island. The next day on the outing, it becomes apparent that the marital dynamic between Anne and Dave is strained verging on contemptuous. Dave is kind of a dick. And Anne and Tom are kind of sizzling.

Later that same day, during a nightcap back at the couple’s beachside suite — arranged by Tom when Anne’s attempt to upgrade them fails with the front desk — Dave hears the thumping music from the Waikiki. Anne and Anton have gone to bed.

“You’re lucky,” Dave says wistfully to his reluctant new friend. “No parents’ evenings, no couples counselling, no horrible wailing emptiness.” Dave then pleads with Tom to take him to the club for one drink, just one. “In and out,” he pledges.

Yeah, right. Tom looks on as things swiftly devolve. Dave pounds the booze and the dancefloor and flirts with the ladies. The pair become separated. Next morning, Dave is missing seemingly without a trace and Anne is… not exactly frantic. But she drafts Tom, with his local connections and conversational Spanish, to help track Dave down.

The film’s midsection follows Tom and Anne attempting to find Dave with various degrees of urgency amid budding attraction. The local constabulary don’t take the situation seriously. A drunken Brit temporarily losing the plot on holiday is something they’ve seen before.

It isn’t until a more senior detective from the capital gets involved and starts asking pointed questions that the search for Dave accelerates — and the truth about Dave and Anne’s relationship hits the surface.

So much about Islands unfolds gradually but lands impactfully, including its very moody score which contrasts starkly against its blazingly bright setting. Tom is the film’s pulse yet it’s never entirely clear how best to read him. Good guy struggling with life’s disappointments? Sad sack squandering a life of luxury? Lost soul? How or why Tom landed in Fuerteventura is never revealed.

Amid that, Dave and Anne face a familiar dilemma: though vacation time is when we are supposed to feel most at ease, we are, ironically, most outside our comfort zones, and most vulnerable to creeping anxieties and insecurities. Islands traces the collision of these two distinct realities asking, ‘How to reconcile this?’

But fantastic cinematography and deeply committed performances, especially from Riley — in almost every frame and just so palpably hangdog — make all that pondering entirely worthwhile. And the final scene will launch a thousand robust debates.

Islands. Written and directed by Jan-Ole Gerster. Starring Sam Riley, Stacy Martin, Jack Farthing and Dylan Torrell. On demand March 13.