Jan-Ole Gerster, director of "Islands": "The characters in my film are all trying to escape from themselves."
Interview With this sunny thriller mixed with the portrait of a seducer at the end of his rope, the German filmmaker has created a little marvel of a summer film.
Interview by Guillaume Loison
Stacy Martin and Sam Riley in “Islands,” by Jan-Ole Gerster. AUGENSCHEIN/LEONINE STUDIOS/SCHIWAGO FILM
A relaxed and affable forty-something, Jan-Ole Gerster apologizes for being sweaty (the mercury is 39°C), orders a Coke Zero, then immediately debriefs his film with the generosity of a young man and the know-how of an old fox. This mixture of relaxation and control is at the heart of "Islands," his third feature film in thirteen years, the story of a neurasthenic, party-loving tennis coach (Sam Riley) who forms a strange ménage à trois with a couple of wealthy clients (Stacy Martin and Jack Farthing). Set in the constant swelter of Fuerteventura, an island in the Canary Islands, the film, which opens in French cinemas this Wednesday, July 2, after receiving the Grand Prize at the Reims Polar International Crime Film Festival, is a sort of missing link between René Clément's "Plein Soleil" (1960) and Hal Ashby's "Shampoo" (1975), another chronicle of a casual seducer caught up in his frivolous existence.
Did you get the idea for "Islands" while watching a tennis coach on the island of Fuerteventura?Jan-Ole Gerster: Right... I went there to work on a screenplay with a friend for one winter. I always find it interesting to observe a micro-society of people who live and work in the exact place where the rest of the world only spends a few days relaxing. I was in a small apartment overlooking a somewhat vegetated tennis court...
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