REVIEW: ISLANDS
THE GIST
It was mysterious, tense, awkward and misleading in the best way possible.
THE REVIEW
!!!SPOILERS!!!
EXPECTATIONS
This was not on any watch list of mine.
But I had an opportunity to watch and ratings were averaging out at 6.8/10.The plot also seemed intriguing so I gave it a go.
The cast and director are unknowns to me.
RATINGS SO FAR
Islands was released overseas on 30th January so the ratings are fairly solid at this point. It was released in New Zealand 4th June. I don’t think it was shown at many cinemas.
CONTEXT
The seeds for Islands were planted roughly a decade before the movie's production. During a trip to the Canary Islands, director Jan-Ole Gerster struck up a conversation with a resident tennis pro. Strikingly handsome yet clearly adrift, the man was coasting through a repetitive, hedonistic routine. The coach insisted he "never regretted" moving to the island, though Gerster observed that the man almost seemed to be trying to convince himself. Captivated by this existential stasis, Gerster went home with the intent to make a film using this man—and his environment—as the foundation for a character study.
THE PLOT
Tom, a tennis pro washed up on a holiday island. Now he's the coach at a hotel resort, hitting countless balls over the net to tourists. When he crosses paths with a particular tourist family, it seems he's found an escape of his own.
THE EXPERIENCE
It was a slow burn mystery that needed to be told that way.
It lead me down paths only to pull the rug out from underneath me.
A film has never fooled me so much before. Bravo!
THE MEAT
Director Jan-Ole Gerster: His 3rd feature film. The first being A Coffee In Berlin, the second being Lara. I have not seen any of them.
Sam Riley: He has been starring in things since 2000. I haven’t seen any of his previous work but I wouldn’t mind checking out Control and Byzantium. Tom has an existential malaise and Sam played that well.
Stacy Martin, who plays Anne, has also been in a number of films over the years I also have not seen.
Composer/Dascha Dauenhauer: Her music was perfect for a mystery film, for this film. It sets the mood for tension, unease and uncertainty. For some reason it reminded me of the score from or at least the movie itself, The Game.
Subtitles did not work when watching. Most of the film is in English but conversations are had in Spanish, especially between Tom and the locals or police. So I missed a lot of what was going on in that respect.
The Story: When the husband goes missing Tom has to team up with the wife to try find him, which turns into a police investigation.
Half way through the reveal that the wife deleted an 11min call from her husband early the morning he went missing. That conversation was about them having troubles having another child and Dave even suspected his wife of their current son having a different father. Then video evidence of her 15mins after the call being caught on a security camera. Anne’s intentions and culpability come into question. She has been hiding things from both Tom and the Police.
I wondered here if Anton was actually Tom’s son from a one night stand he had with Anne years ago. I think Tom suspected Anton is his son too. He asks how old he is and he says 7 years and 2 months. You can see Tom thinking about the timeframe.
From what I read elsewhere, apparently Tom and Anne were attracted to each other. I totally missed that, but I would lol.
About 3/4’s the way through, Anne says that she definitely knew that Tom once said “living on the island was temporary” but he couldn’t recall. I think she was referring to years ago when they first met.
About 3/4’s of the way through, Tom makes up a story to cover for Anne not being able to explain where she went the morning of her husband’s disappearance. He said she was with him. It was around this time I was suspecting Anne was setting Tom up to frame him.
I can’t believe they slept with each other. It was a bizarre situation.
I was blown away they found the husband Dave. I was sure he was dead.
This looked devastating for Tom. Imagining being attracted to someone who was married, then suspecting you are the actual father to their child, to the husband looking like he was out of the picture, to becoming intimate with Anne and thinking they had a future, to having all that taken away. I would be heartbroken but also feel a fool for not seeing it coming, for letting myself indulge in such fantasies. It’s like the husband going missing wasn’t mourned, instead it was looked at as an opportunity to explore their fantasies.
Tom goes back to his old habits. The emptiness of his life after that got him thinking. Thinking enough to make a move from his trapped life.
The Ending: The ending was one of those somewhat ambiguous ones. It ends with him at the airport to buy a ticket and she asks where he wants to go. The end. Was he going to find Anne? Was he going to start anew elsewhere. I think that’s why in this case, an ambiguous ending works. He was free to go anywhere he wanted, the important thing was that he was going somewhere else.
I am not sure if interpreted this film correctly as it mislead me so many times:
Anton was never Tom’s son.
Anne and Tom had never met before.
The husband Dave wasn’t dead.
Anne wasn’t a murderer.
SUMMARY
It’s a film that needs a rewatch and deserves it too.
