Vacations are supposed to be restorative; they provide an escape from reality. But what if evading their existence goes too far for those already on the run from their lives— or those trapped in their golden handcuffs reality? That’s the subtle question posed in German director Jan-Ole Gerster’s (“Lara”) excellent and captivating new drama, “Islands,” about lonely souls who find themselves amid fraught and anxious circumstances that appear as though if they’ll provide an exit from the escape room they are dwelling in.
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Set in Fuerteventura, in the Canary Islands, “Islands” initially centers on Tom (a terrific Sam Riley), a former one-time tennis pro turned tennis coach at a local hotel resort. Tom is washed up, literally and figuratively; his career is long over, and one intuits that he randomly washed up on this island in a haze of drunken abandon and never left. Living a type of fanciful endless summer, Tom is like a Peter Pan escaping adulthood and real responsibility—even though he’s clearly well into his late 30s or early 40s— coaching tennis to novices and getting drunk at clubs at night, often waking up in arbitrary locations somewhere on the island (random hooks up abound too, obviously).
Tom’s illusive existence, however, is disrupted by the sudden arrival of the affluent and privileged Maguire family on holiday, led by the elusive and fetching Anne (Stacy Martin), her self-absorbed husband Dave (Jack Farthing) and their sweet young son Anton (Dylan Torrell).
While Tom is all booked with tennis lessons, Anne insists that he coach her son, using the flex of double the fee to sway him—though she has alluring delicate but discernible sensual energy enough to convince him either way. Tom begins to coach Anton—a mentoring friendship is born—and the family and Tom grow closer as they cross paths beyond just tennis handoffs.
Like many married couples, both Anne and Tom seem to be deeply unhappy and stuck in an existential rut—and it certainly doesn’t hurt that Tom and Anne appear to share percolating chemistry. However, their attraction magnetism is further stoked through fraught anxiety. Coaxed into a night of binge drinking by Dave, Tom and the father hit the town, but the next day, it turns out Dave has gone mysteriously missing.
This turn of events electrifies the already captivating drama and ratchets up the stakes for everyone, as it’s unclear what Dave’s ultimate fate is.
Written by the director along with Lawrie Doran and Blaž Kutin, “Islands” is incredibly perceptive and intuitive, speaking volumes with very little other than furtive or meaningful glances. In this regard, the cinematic mise-en-scene of the movie is impeccable, bringing to mind the similar understated but potent camera and acting work of the Oscar-nominated “Aftersun.”
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“Islands” bubbles with intangible intrigue and mystery, some of it sexual, some of it sensual, notes of loneliness, self-deception and the desperate need for connection in an unfulfilled life.
Gerster creates terrific intimacy throughout; his faint filmmaking hand softly touches these notes but never presses on them too hard, so it always keeps you guessing. Is “Islands” about to turn into a thriller? Is the movie about to turn into a torrid sexual affair? Is it about to go in an unexpected genre direction? Much like the thrilling unknowability of first-time flirtation that has mutually begun to crackle, “Islands” keeps you guessing and hums with a compelling nervous energy that deeply engages you in the people and their very relatable and human drama.
Sam Reilly shot out of the gate hard and fast with Anton Corbijn’s excellent Joy Division biopic “Control,” but he’s seemingly struggled to retain that fire. But he captures it here in “Islands” and then some, seemingly reemerging for the first time in a new light; it’s easily his best performance since “Control.”
Likewise, Stacy Martin is bewitching, playing the fetching MILF that slowly begins to enter Tom, but not as a honeypot trap; she’s as lonesome and without meaning as he is.
“Islands” is engrossingly observant, fascinating in its restrained exploration of human interiority, and persuasive and even intoxicating in its rich examination of longing, emptiness, and the ways we deeply yearn to be found, even when we choose flight in the fight or flight binary of our primal getaway response. I definitely cannot wait to see what Jan-Ole Gerster does next, and if he wasn’t entirely on my radar before, he certainly is now. [A-]
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