This unusual production offers an English-language film shot on Fuerteventura, one of the larger islands of the Canaries with a number of tourist resorts. Yet it is a purely German production in terms of creative input, cast and crew. Many of the cast are Spanish and speak Spanish and English. It was distributed to cinemas in the UK by BFI Films and is now available on BFI Player.
Tom (Sam Riley) is a tennis coach at a large hotel on the island. He was once a professional player before an injury and he has now been a coach for several years. Off the court his life seems aimless and he spends his evenings smoking, drinking and drug-taking and having casual sex with various women tourists. His job does not seem very onerous and often the booked lessons are unattended. One day a woman and her 10 year-old son appear without booking: Anne (Stacy Martin) and Anton (Dylan Torrell) are staying in the resort hotel with Dave (Jack Farthing) the husband and father. He doesn’t appear until later. For Tom this is an interesting diversion. Anton is keen to learn and Tom is attracted to Anne who seems vaguely familiar. When Dave finally appears he seems a combination of the brash and possibly ‘snooty’ type of middle-class Englishman, finding fault with the hotel and ‘splashing the cash’. Overall there is something odd about the couple, although Anton seems an ordinary and clearly bright boy. Tom ends up helping the family get a better room in the hotel and then finds himself offering to act as a tour guide on his day off, taking them around the island. At the end of the day and a boozy night at a local club, Dave disappears. Tom and Anne are faced with looking for him and dealing with the local police who are forced to hand the case over to a detective from the city.
This is quite a long film at 120 minutes but I never got bored or struggled to engage with it. It is relatively slowly-paced and therefore depends on the characters and the build-up of intrigue and then suspense as to what might have happened. During a Q&A (available free on BFI Player) the writer-director Jan-Ole Gerster and star Sam Riley discuss several aspects of the film including the setting and the characters. For audiences outside Europe it is worth pointing out that the Canary Islands, officially part of Spain (and therefore the EU) have attractions to two groups of people. As the nearest part of Europe to West Africa they are attractive to migrants trying to get to Europe and as a holiday destination they are particularly important for large groups of people in Northern Europe seeking the sun – especially in winter. One aspect of the plot of Islands is that Tom appears to have developed a friendship with a local farm attraction run by an African couple who offer camel rides. This means Tom appears more ‘grounded’ on the island than his louche lifestyle might imply. Fuerteventura is the second largest of the six main populated islands. It is also the oldest and most eroded with a barren surface of volcanic rocks which means black shingle runs down towards white sand beaches, attracting sun worshippers, water sports fans etc. It’s spectacular and the ‘Scope photography by Juan Sarmiento G. (who has some impressive credits) captures it well. The film germinated in the mind of Jan-Ole Gerster when, as he says, he was escaping a German winter. The two names that seem to turn up in most conversations and writing about the film are ‘Hitchcock’ and ‘Highsmith’. I can see both but I think the Patricia Highsmith references make the most sense. As we’ve noted on this blog, Europeans have been fairly frequent adapters of Highsmith novels and we have covered several on the blog.
The typical Highsmith story puts together groups of people who haven’t necessarily known each other before. The relationships that develop tend be strained and wary. Something criminal may well be bubbling below the surface and occasionally there are murders. Often though, in Highsmith nobody is caught. In this narrative Tom (also the name of Highsmith’s best-known character Tom Ripley) seems to be being ‘played’ in some way by Anne and/or Dave. Why is this happening? I’m not sure. There is no clear resolution of the narrative, except possibly that Tom might have changed because of his encounter with the family and become more focused on what he wants to do.
I enjoyed watching the film but I’m still a little confused as to how and why it was funded. I think the answer might be because of the director’s success with productions for German TV. But why make it in English? Presumably in English the film might be expected to get distribution in the UK and US. In the UK it did get a limited release via the British Film Institute and I watched it on BFI Player. In the US it is due to be released by Greenwich Entertainment in 2026 and it appears to have gone to many countries in Europe plus Taiwan and Turkey. In Germany it was dubbed into German. Stacy Martin is probably most widely known in Europe but Sam Riley has a profile in UK and International films. I don’t know too much about Jack Farthing but he appears to have been in various TV productions and a number of cinema features. He seems to have the same kind of middle-class background as Benedict Cumberbatch or Eddie Redmayne. I think Sam Riley is very good in this – nearly as good as in Control (UK 2007), but this is a more challenging role in many ways. Overall I recommend the film, especially if you enjoy Highsmith-flavoured narratives. Here is the UK trailer:
itp Global Film 