As writer-director, Vladimir de Fontenay has taken the central novella Sukkwan Island from David Vann’s autobiographical short-fiction collection from 2009, detached it from the surrounding complex constellation of stories related to this main piece and presents it here as a standalone drama of father-son bonding.
The resulting film begins as something forthright and heartfelt; it looks as if it’s going to be a liberatingly scary wilderness adventure out there in the real world away from cellphones, social media etc. But with its strenuous yet subdued performances and weirdly cramped and gloomy narrative, it leads us finally into a blind alley: a twist-reveal which I found fundamentally unsatisfying.
