Direction: Jan-Ole Gerster
Country: Germany
Shot is Spain with British actors, Islands is a bittersweet neo-noir thriller co-written and directed by Jan-Ole Gerster (A Coffee in Berlin, 2012; Lara, 2019), marking his third feature. The German filmmaker draws inspiration from American painter Edward Hopper to shape his melancholy yet intriguing characters. The script briefly disorients before settling into a more routine pattern, ultimately reaching a conclusion that, unfortunately, feels predictable.
The story follows Tom (Sam Riley), a disillusioned tennis coach with a drinking problem working at a holiday resort on the sun-drenched Canary Island of Fuerteventura. He connects with Anne (Stacy Martin) and Dave (Jack Farthing), an English couple whose relationship is far from solid, and agrees to act as a tour guide for them.
Islands feels like a lingering, dangerous hangover that keeps the audience guessing to a certain extent. The storytelling isn’t particularly strong, and this sub-Hitchcockian runaround gradually becomes weighed down by emotional sterility. Conveying a strange sense of solitude, this functional yet somewhat forgettable thriller proves less adept at exploring the broader, more intriguing possibilities it initially suggests.
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