Film »Islands« – Berlinale: Sharp on Anne

So far, Jan-Ole Gerster has presented two films that everyone caused a sensation. In particular, his first work “Oh Boy” (2012) was remembered as a rare stroke of luck of an Arthouse film, which was also commercially successful. The shilky-white-filmed, so completely undeutsche, with jazz music, sheltered lightness, with which Tom Schilling meandered through Berlin at the time, was immediately recognized with the German Film Award. His second film “Lara” (2019) also convinced with Corinna Harfouch – through the sophisticated script of the Slovenian -born author Blaž carin, which made the film into a precisely balanced structure, from which one could not have removed a piece of the puzzle without the construct collapsed.

The book on Gerster’s current film “Islands”, which had its premiere in the Berlinale Special section, also comes from Kutin, based on an idea of ​​Gerster. This time both embark on a nameless Spanish holiday island in the Mediterranean (filmed on Fuerteventura). Here Tom (Sam Riley) works as a tennis teacher in a chic hotel complex. It seems to the prototype of failed existence; At the beginning of forty and without family, he trains bored with the holidaymakers during the day and regularly stuns the emptiness of his existence at night in the local discotheque and one-night stand. His biggest problem is the fact that the tennis lessons start at nine in the morning. The viewer learns nothing about Tom’s past, where and where, so that he remains a very pale main character and does not really become a sympathizer. His trott is only interrupted by the arrival of the Maguire family. At the tennis lessons for son Anton, Anne and Dave, the two parents, friends with Tom. Why Tom Freitens lets tennis lessons whiz and thus risk his job to spend time with the Maguires remains unclear. Is the attraction based on subliminal envy on the young family happiness? Or is he just sharply on the adorable, good -looking Anne?

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During the joint forays across the island, it quickly becomes clear that Tom and Anne (Stacy Martin) are attracted to each other, a delicate crackling lies in the air when Anne can be applied by him while Dave (Jack Farthing) with the son Toll in the water. It is clear that Anne and Dave’s marriage is crisis, and Anne also seems to carry a secret with him. All of this is surprisingly conventional, although routinely told and filmed, and the response -like reviewer is waiting for the bang with which the plot finally gets going. Unfortunately, the film ripples almost an hour without something remarkable. Until suddenly Dave disappears after a trip to the mentioned discotheque. Of course, Tom supports the astonishingly relaxed wife in the search for her husband. After the search is unsuccessful and the police are involved, there are soon doubts about the course of the action and Anne and Tom is suspected of having something to do with the supposed death of the poor Dave.

Sounds banal? Unfortunately it is too. The fact that Anne is also becoming more and more femmeted by femme cannot prevent Tom from walking strangely passively like a fool behind her and after an hour and a half runtime, the viewer still wonders where the trip is going. So “Iceland’s” is neither fish nor meat; Too irrelevant for an arthouse film, too harmless for a psychodrama, too tension for a thriller. In the last third of the film, he also increasingly loses plausibility than if the author had no longer occurred. Of course, in the end everything is very different than expected, but it can not really put the viewer, who has been waiting for a surprise for too long. PS The supposed secret of Annes was none at all.