The score of Jan-Ole Gerster’s Islands is one of the first signals about its intended genre and reference points: with lush, orchestral strings overlaid by jazzy piano and trumpet, Dascha Dauenhauer’s compositions raise the specter of Bernard Herrmann. With the score’s first chords resonating as a weathered, yet handsome middle-aged man drives away from a night spent passed out on the sand, Gerster invokes the classical modes of mystery and intrigue codified by the likes of Alfred Hitchcock. It frustrates, then, that the film proves to lack a narrative engine to justify the aesthetic pastiche. A sunbaked noir with a weak pulse, Islands ultimately settles into too sedate of a rhythm for its mysteries to be truly absorbing.
The mysterious man from the opening frames is Tom (Sam Riley), a tennis instructor at a middling all-inclusive resort on Fuerteventura, one of the heavily touristed Canary Islands. Tom instructs tourists by day and parties with them by night, maintaining few long-term connections. A visiting British family soon compels him enough to disrupt his desultory routine. Anne (Stacy Martin) and Dave (Jack Farthing) are an attractive couple whose seven-year-old son, Anton (Dylan Torrell), is a naturally gifted tennis player. Charmed by the picture-perfect family, Tom re-arranges his schedule to give private lessons to Anton and helps to move the family from their single room into an ocean-view suite, even latching onto them to the extent that he gives them a private tour of the island. Anne and Dave’s marriage, though, shows signs of intense strain, and longtime acquaintances of Tom murmur that Anne looks suspiciously familiar. After an ill-fated night out with Dave, Tom becomes far more entangled with the family, leading him to question the future direction of his unfulfilling life.
In addition to Dauenhauer’s fine orchestral score, which includes direct references to Hermann’s compositions for Vertigo, Juan Sarmiento G.’s cinematography clearly invokes Islands’ forebears. High-contrast and color-saturated, the well-executed visual aesthetic echoes thrillers and noirs set in vacation destinations, including Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief and Jacques Deray’s La Piscine. Gerster’s visual and sonic palette for Islands is impressive, but the glacial pace with which he develops the plot weighs the film down. Gerster allows the narrative to progress a few beats too slowly, so that rather than compelling the viewer to sit forward, it is more likely they’ll disengage. The overly relaxed pace is reflected in the performances as well, which are uniformly skilled yet directed to be a touch too muted and detached. Crucially, the actual events of the plot also do not fully satisfy. There are several major twists in the screenplay written by Gerster with Blaž Kutin and Lawrie Doran, but they oddly tend to lower the stakes of the narrative rather than ratchet up the tension. Even the more intriguing narrative turns suffer from excessive build-up, so that anything less than an explosive reveal would feel slightly deflating.
Islands, to some extent, is more effective as a character study than a slow-burn noir. Gerster teases out the origins of Tom’s dissatisfaction and dissolution so that the viewer grows, bit by bit, closer to the character. Likewise, Tom’s attachment to Anne, Dave, and Anton accordingly becomes increasingly bittersweet as the film progresses; an extended sequence between Tom and Anton even suggests the emotional sensitivity of Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun. Yet Islands still presents as a classical noir mystery, and on these terms, it never truly succeeds. Though handsomely mounted and thoughtfully crafted, Islands is less likely to leave a viewer on the edge of their seat than it is to make them feel that they’ve dozed off on a picturesque beach.
DIRECTOR: Jan-Ole Gerster; CAST: Sam Riley, Stacy Martin, Jack Farthing, Dylan Torrell; DISTRIBUTOR: Greenwich Entertainment; IN THEATERS: January 30; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 1 min.
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