Tom (Sam Riley) has become a fixture in a place where most people are transient. Tourists walk in and out of his life daily, but not before reminding him that his sundrenched existence in the paradisical Fuerteventura, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, is worthy of envy. Yet, the tennis instructor who’s lived there for years and even learned Spanish doesn’t feel he’s on a perpetual vacation, as those on temporary holiday imply. Tom’s wallowing in inescapable ennui drives “Islands,” German director Jan-Ole Gerster’s enigmatic character study that doubles as a tentative murder mystery dripping with sexual tension.
Gerster establishes Tom’s stunted emotional state from the opening, as he raises his head, buried in sand after one of his many drunken nights spent with people he’ll never see again. Early morning tennis sessions with guests at the hotel that employs him feel phoned in, barely embellished with the little enthusiasm he can muster from behind sunglasses. Riley fully inhabits his character’s anhedonia, surrendering to a mostly unchanged dramatic register no matter what faces him. That mode can at times make his performance feel frustratingly one-note, because there are barely any spikes of anger or deep dejection in Tom. Only a timid and rehearsed half-smile crosses his face on occasion.
However, that consistently monotone persona is tailored for “Islands,” a film that feels alluringly disorienting, like walking in a hazy stupor inside an enticing purgatory—captured in all its oppressive brightness by cinematographer Juan Sarmiento G. Tom’s routine of robotic racket swinging, substance abuse, and empty connections on a crowded dancefloor is eventually shaken up when Anne (Stacy Martin), a married woman staying at the hotel, hires him to give her seven-year-old son Anton (Dylan Torrells) private tennis lessons. An unspoken spark between them sizzles instantly, one where Anne appears to have the upper hand even before the dangerous power dynamic is fully established.
Perhaps it’s her unclassifiable personality parked somewhere between apprehensive and nonchalant—as if remnants of her former self, before settling down, eagerly want to peek through—that attracts him. Martin perfectly calibrates Anne’s dismissive apathy and cunning curiosity about Tom. Though no details about Tom’s past and why or how he ended up in Fuerteventura are ever revealed, a key anecdote exposes a previous path cut short. They are not so different, it seems. Anne’s husband Dave (Jack Farthing), a vape-inhaling, cell phone-addicted businessman, completes the unsettling love triangle that grows in complications as Tom volunteers to show the family the island, inserting himself into the couple’s already testy marital waters.
An air of perpetual dissatisfaction coats the characters in “Islands,” more precisely, those who are not locals. For the recent arrivals, this isle offers a chance to leave behind who they are on the mainland of their lives. When Dave vanishes after a night out with Tom, the narrative exposes Anne’s fantasy of freedom, or at least a fresh start, and allows Tom to play house for a couple of days, stepping in as a substitute father and devoted romantic partner. For these two characters, removing Dave offers a simulacrum of the alternative realities they believe would grant them the satisfaction they are sorely missing. And that may or may not be true, but neither can resist the temptation of living out their “what if” momentarily. It’s morbid that the possibility of man’s death is what propels this, and that’s what “Islands” procures: a sense of something sinister bubbling under manicured vistas.
As Tom accompanies Anne during her dutiful ordeal searching for her husband and dealing with the police, Gerster and his co-writers, Blaz Kutin and Lawrie Doran, invest in the peripheral characters, longtime residents who ground the story and put into perspective the champagne problems of the entitled tourists and of Tom, their chaperone, still a foreigner here. Local cop Jorge (Pep Ambròs) pays little mind to visitors’ woes; he has a daughter to worry about. María (Bruna Cusí) at the front desk warns Tom about getting too involved with patrons. And even Tom’s friends, a Moroccan elderly couple renting camels to travelers, have decided to return home to Casablanca, where their children are.
In fact, the filmmakers suggest that Tom’s closest counterpart might not be a person at all, but a camel who constantly runs away, until it meets its demise. If he lives in a location where others vacation, then where can he go to disconnect? Maybe a bustling city. As much as he’s tried to plant roots on the island, the soil keeps rejecting them. In the form of Inspector Mazo (Ramiro Blas), who has come from Spain’s mainland to investigate Dave’s disappearance as a possible murder, Gerster introduces another outsider who has no illusions of fitting in, unlike Tom. Boasting arrogance, Mazo knows he’s not wanted on the island and looks down on the townies that call it home.
“Islands” may commit too strongly to a dramatic passiveness to preserve its mystifying quality, making one wish for the greatest catharsis, particularly as the time is filled with Tom hanging out with Anton. But while the on-the-nose title suggests each individual is an isolated entity (even Anton doesn’t enjoy being around other kids), the character construction and how their respective desires intersect with one another, in tandem with an effectively dizzying atmosphere, render it more original than expected.
