Tom is perfectly aware that his life is a string of bad TV clich\u00e9s. He spends half his day coaching tennis at a four-star hotel, and the other half he doesn’t remember, as he escapes into drinking and all sorts of intoxication. A while ago he was a tennis prodigy who once faced Rafael Nadal, but now Tom does his best to blend in with the hotel staff. Until the moment when he encounters a British family \u2013 the platinum blonde Anna straight out of a Hitchcock film, her husband Dave, and their young son Anton. Tom becomes Anton\u2019s coach, grows closer to Anna, and begins to see a chance to escape the palm-fringed hell he\u2019s created for himself\u2026<\/p>\n
If Antonioni had wanted to shoot L\u2019Avventura<\/i> (1960) in the Canary Islands and with a camel making an appearance, it would have looked very much like this sun-drenched, tennis-court noir by German auteur Gerster. Screened at the Berlinale, the film\u2019s script winds like a scenic mountain road, deliberately disorienting and utterly captivating \u2013 a love triangle, played by a thoroughly modern trio that seems to have stepped straight out of the best 1950s thrillers: Sam Riley (Control<\/i> (2007)), Stacy Martin (Nymphomaniac<\/i> (2013)), and Jack Farthing (Poldark <\/i>(2015\u20132019)). Gerster dissects not only cinematic iconography amid the picturesque tourist idyll of Lanzarote \u2013 but also the millennial generation, their life choices and expectations: what are they searching for today, and does comparing yourself to others lead to identity puzzles and the temptation to borrow someone else\u2019s life?<\/p>\n","images":[{"ID":41533,"id":41533,"title":"Islands","filename":"Islands.jpg","filesize":956120,"url":"https:\/\/rigaiff.lv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Islands.jpg","link":"https:\/\/rigaiff.lv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Islands.jpg","alt":"","author":"21","description":"","caption":"","name":"28897e11555c45ca8b4d55c5ee4c88eb","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":41530,"date":"2025-07-21 16:10:07","modified":"2025-07-21 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