Islands is German writer/director Jan Ole-Gerster’s third feature and his first truly international co-production, with a Spanish setting and a British cast. It’s also a master class for writers in how to integrate plot and setting. The narrative showcases Fuerteventura in all its dry, barren glory. It doesn’t set out to purposely destroy the holiday idyl, but it illustrates the often-tawdry reality of the seasonal work behind the sunshine and the smiles. It shows what it’s like to live every day in a place that most people experience only as a dreamlike temporality, and how it’s possible to be acutely unhappy while living in paradise.

Tom is a former tennis ace, now making a living coaching tourists, and facing down looming middle-age as a lonely, washed-up alcoholic. When wealthy and discontent couple Anne and Dave arrive at the hotel, with their seven-year-old, Anton who’s keen to improve his tennis, Tom is struck by Anne and a belief that they’ve met once before. He’s consequently drawn into the couple’s domestic traumas. What follows, hidden within a fairly standard mystery plot, is a psychological study of what it’s like to be stuck in a place physically and emotionally, and to be afraid to make the much-needed changes in your life.

Sam Riley (Control; Firebrand) gives a stellar performance as Tom. His sunburnt, tired face, which will have you reaching for the factor 50, literally drips with vulnerability. Credit should also go to Riley’s make-up artist here. Watching him at the start add yet more vodka on top of his emotional exhaustion is cringe-worthy but it helps us sympathise with him when the spoiled Anne and Dave turn up, over-sharing the misery of their picture-perfect lives. In a memorable moment where Anne asks Tom to put sun cream on her back, his hand visibly shakes, maybe from desire but it could equally be from alcohol withdrawal, or both.

Jack Farthing (The Riot Club; Spencer) is at home as the passive aggressive husband Dave, and rising star Stacy Martin is an alluring manipulative enigma as Anne. The film is a little long and feels it. It’s a full two hours; the tension building eerily – and slowly. The plot, with its undertones of narcissism and class snobbery keeps you guessing as to who exactly has done what and why. It leaves some questions deliberately unanswered but there’s a strong sense by the end of the self-involved couple having detected Tom’s loneliness from a mile off and exploited his subconscious willingness to lose himself in their dramas. The conclusion is inevitably a little more pedestrian than the build-up promises but that doesn’t take away from it being an astute character study and an enjoyable watch.

Screened as part of Edinburgh International Film Festival 2025 and is in UK cinemas from Fri 12 Sep 2025