This Week at the Movies: Islands

People in search - this sentence could be used to describe Jan-Ole Gerster's first three films, be it "A Coffee in Berlin", "Lara" or his latest work "Islands". British actor Sam Riley plays Tom, a former tennis pro who has ended up as a coach in a hotel on Fuerteventura: Once a promising talent, he now practices serves with vacationers. He spends his nights with lots of alcohol in the local tourist discos. Gerster establishes this profane setting in a fascinating mixture of laconic poetry and gentle stylization, true to life and yet very "cinematic". When a mysterious tourist enters Tom's life, whom he is soon to help in the search for her missing husband, Tom's monotonous daily routine begins to change - but it soon becomes clear that nothing is as it seems. Gerster cleverly transfers classic film noir motifs to the glistening light of the Canary Islands. There is a blonde femme fatale and a sad, mean husband, a cool inspector and the boozy hobby detective Tom, who gets caught between all the fronts. The fact that the whole thing doesn't end up being half as dramatic as one thinks seems a little frustrating at first, but somehow it fits: after all, the amateur detective Tom, who is led stumblingly on a kind of search for meaning, is a typical Gerster protagonist.