Neither pulpy enough for the midnight movie crowd, nor classy enough for the arthouse, this alleged thriller about a young woman called Alex (Aida Folch), who travels to an idyllic Greek island where she meets mysterious restaurant owner Max (Matt Dillon), who is obviously repressing some sort of dark past, feels like a missed opportunity. Spanish director Fernando Trueba (Belle Époque, Chico & Rita), working from an iffy script he co-wrote with Rylend Grant, gets most of the ingredients right – exotic location, good-looking leads, a few different narrative reveals up its sleeve – but flubs the execution, leaving his cast floundering (in one case literally, in a fake drowning scene).
You can see why the actors signed on, though. Dillon’s role is the sort of thing Humphrey Bogart used to do so well in films such as In a Lonely Place: surly, standoffish and yet somehow still attractive enough that you can see why someone might pursue him despite being festooned with more red flags than a golf course. There are a couple of details in the script that should have sounded the alarm. When his much-telegraphed dark past starts to be revealed and it emerges that among many more significant secrets Max used to be a jazz musician, it would help if his instrument of choice was something other than the clarinet. Maybe there’s a way to cut to Dillon mournfully tootling in the Mediterranean moonlight that doesn’t register as funny, but if so, this film didn’t find it.
It’s equally difficult for Folch to escape with dignity fully intact when she’s stuck with a character who seems so clueless: initially to the fact that Max seems completely uninterested in her, then, after she’s practically wrestled him into bed, to the giant blaring klaxons announcing that digging into his past might not be such a good idea. Matters would have been improved from the audience’s point of view, however, if said digging had happened a little sooner; the film takes its sweet time to get to where we sense it’s going, and then quickly runs out of steam when it does. It’s a shame, because cinema could use more Patricia Highsmith homages; this just doesn’t happen to be a particularly successful one.
• The Island is on digital platforms from 23 September.
