Starring: Sam Riley (Control, Maleficent), Stacy Martin (Nymphomaniac, All The Money In The World), Jack Farthing (Poldark), Dylan Torrell
Director: Jan Ole-Gerster (German filmmaker who made A Coffee In Berlin)
Tom (Riley) lives a dissipated life on the Canary Islands, working by day as a tennis coach at a resort, and by night doing cocaine and sleeping with girls who stay at the hotel, frequently waking up in strange places. When a family of three comes to the resort and seek lessons for their young son Anton (Torrell), the wife Anne (Martin) seems to know Tom and draws him into their circle. After a night of drinking and bickering, Dave (Farthing) goes missing, and Tom is drawn further into the strange drama that is playing out.
Islands is set on the Canary Islands, on a the kind of resort that a lot of British people head to for sunshine. Tom has lived there for a while, and we see him able to navigate between the lives of the visitors, and those of the locals. He has old friends who treat him like extended family and who own a camel farm, on of which wayward inhabitants keeps running away and wandering around. He’s become part of the fabric, the routine of the place, but in some ways, he doesn’t really live there. His apartment isn’t a home and he seems to rarely sleep there, and when Anne asks him how often he goes to one of the beautiful local beaches, he says he hasn’t been in years.
That coasting along the surface of his life makes it all the more intriguing when he gets drawn into the life of the family trio. After a few tennis lessons, he takes the family for a private tour around for a day, joins them for a drink afterwards and doesn’t seem that put off by their bickering and oversharing the details of their problems. When Dave goes missing, he leaves work to involve himself in the case.
And this brings me to the best thing about this movie. While it’s billed as a thriller, it’s not really. The pacing is fairly measured and easy, and there’s no ticking clock. Dave doesn’t go missing immediately, we’re not given a sense of intensity and genre level drama. The mystery really comes from and is built in how everyone interacts. It’s a masterwork in show and don’t tell. The answers to everything are all there, but none of it is spelled out. Which makes it such a pleasure to watch.
There’s been a lot of talk recently around the way that films are being dumbed down and directives handed down from studio higher ups that movies are content now, and that viewers need things to be obvious because they will be on their phones. But films outside of Hollywood don’t have these restrictions, and this film is such a pleasant surprise because of it. A lot of the story is told in where we see Tom wake up, the way Anne turns towards Tom, and his actions in being present and where he chooses to be. Cuts from his face to what he’s looking at, or small gestures of openness or closed off body language. We know all about his life because we see it, there’s no exposition. It’s so, so refreshing.
I love the direction of this film. The repeated sounds and imagery that show routine, the little moments that speak to the inner turmoil, and the way the holiday destination landscape of hotels and beaches is juxtaposed with the workaday life of Tom and even the seriousness of the situation. I really liked the quiet way that Sam Riley has his character talk. He’s clearly well liked in the community, generally, though not everyone approves of his lifestyle. He seems kind, encouraging in the way he talks to his students, but also a solitary figure, even while surrounded by people. It was so fascinating to me, watching his face and his sight lines, figuring out what he was thinking, what he wants and why he was helping this family, why he was so involved.
All of the actors give an excellent performance. There’s no self consciousness here, which I often feel from modern actors. No one is playing a role, they’re in inhabiting one, which is so key to this film working. I was really impressed with the child actor Dylan Torrell, who was completely natural and believable, and had solid rapport with Sam Riley.
I don’t want to spoil the plot because it’s nice to just sink into this one and figure it out or watch it unfold yourself, but I liked the pacing. Normally I don’t always love a slow burn film, but here it feels intentional. There’s a reason for every shot and every look, they all build place or personality, show routine or give you little things that piece the story together for you. It poses a lot of questions, takes us on some turns along the road, some misdirects, but then shows you all the pieces for you to find the answers, because it knows we can do this, it trusts it’s audience to be adults who read the faces of people around them every day.
I think Sam Riley does something really good with Tom. In a lot of ways, he’s a dissipated old soak, sad and maybe washed up, but we see he’s well liked, he’s good with people, and somehow he’s managed to keep his job and remains fully booked. Anne and Dave are both harder to like, a bit more brittle and bitter, shallow and seem to find the best parts of their lives meaningless: comfortable wealth, their son, each other. They bicker, they’re cold, they’re manipulative and sometimes high handed. All three are lacking meaning in life, are going through the motions and chasing an elusive high rather than being able to connect. This could make for a very cold movie, or one where you may not care for what happens to any of them, and yet Sam Riley makes Tom intriguing, and Stacy Martin makes Anne a touch femme fatale (though not so dramatic or obvious as that title usually entails), which makes for an arresting story. Tom’s large, dark eyes show a lot of his humanity and what he thinks he may have found in this trio. It’s an excellent performance.
This was such a refreshing film for me. I love when a film trusts it’s audience and just shows rather than tells. It’s really normal in older films, but not something you see as often these days. And I love when actors are given material that allows them to really disappear into the character. They’re not playing themselves, but inhabiting a character in service of the story and creating a psychologically real person on screen. I found the story really interesting and loved piecing it together. A slow burn, but one worth sitting with.
See It If: you’ve ever lost a friend on holiday. This was very well crafted film, with excellent performances and plotting.
Thank you to VIFF, here in Vancouver, for showing this film and a range of fabulous world, cult and classic movies all year round.
Wildfire Movies 