Love Island

Look, it’s obviously not the fault of this 2014 non-English language movie that it ended up sharing a title with an extraordinarily popular reality TV show. But damn, if Love Island’s title didn’t make my internet searches 10 times harder. We live in an age where SEO matters. Keep that in mind when naming your product. I’m looking at you, WLW movies named Thick, Two, the multiple ones named Kiss Me and worst of all, Paul Spurrier’s film just called P. I’m out here trying to watch your film! Don’t make it harder for me by making the name ungoogleable.

Love Island is not wholly dissimilar to the reality show. It’s about vacations, sex appeal and infidelity. Married couple Liliane and Grebo are on vacation at a Croatian island. Liliane is 9 months pregnant and Grebo sort of sucks. Both quickly notice a singer and worker at their resort named Flora. Grebo very much wants to have sex with Flora, which Flora allows. But the real story is between Flora and Liliane. They already know each other. The women are exes. And Flora seems very much to want to take Liliane back. Liliane’s heavily tempted given the fact that as mentioned, Grebo sort of sucks.

Technically, Love Island is a comedy. But it’s a comedy not because of an abundance of jokes. It’s more just that they chose to tell this story in a fairly upbeat way. The pacing and energy is good, and that of a comedy. But the film lacks in punchlines. Or, at least successful ones. The upbeat vibe of it all makes the film an easy sit. And it doesn’t tip over into zany comedy. But still, this is a comedy that never really made me laugh.

So much of this film is literal vacation footage. And that’s never as interesting to the person viewing it as it was to the person shooting it. The film wants to have a relaxed, island vibe. But especially early on, it tends to tip over into feeling boring or pointless. This maybe could’ve been helped through strong visuals. But that’s not what we get. The art direction, costume design and lighting are nothing to write home about. And some of the camera work is abjectly bad. There’s frequent usage of really shaky zoom-ins. It makes this sexy vacation movie suddenly feel like surveillance footage. This is one of those cases where if you notice the camerawork, something’s gone very wrong. And overall, none of the directorial choices help elevate Love Island’s script.

This movie really doesn’t understand or care to understand pregnancy. Liliane is nine months pregnant this whole movie. She rarely acts like it. On a physical level, she doesn’t move like someone would if they had a fully formed person in their belly. And she’s also pretty careless. She dances vigorously and drops into the full splits at one point. The film at least acknowledges this would probably cause some pain. But she also keeps pressing herself fully against her two lovers, seemingly completely ignoring her stomach. And then there’s the labour scene. Dang, ain’t no pregnancy like a comedy pregnancy because a comedy pregnancy has labour that lasts mere minutes. Liliane’s water breaks. And within the time span of one song, she’s pushing out her child. Immediately afterwards, she shares a steamy kiss with both of her lovers and has a cigarette. Afterbirth? Never heard of her.

Love Island does have a fun, complex, modern sensibility to monogamy and relationships. This isn’t quite a poly film. It’s more just a married couple cheating with the same woman. But there’s still the implication that their relationship might be stronger if it was open. Maybe. Again, this is somewhat undone by the fact that Grebo sucks. And to be fair, Liliane sort of sucks too. One moment I applaud the film for is Grebo also getting a moment of extramarital bisexuality. He’s got a male friend who gives him the emotional support that Liliane very much doesn’t. And he kisses this friend passionately at the end of the film. Love Island ends with the suggestion that Liliane and Grebo will stay together but open their relationship. And that will make everyone happier. And I believe that. Though I think they might be happier still if they fully split up.

Love Island is one of those films where I’m giving it a negative review but I want to declare that I’m not mad at it. It was fine, I guess. I didn’t hate spending 86 minutes in this story. But there’s simply more negatives to the film that I can pinpoint than positives. I like Love Island’s energy. But really, that’s about it. The pacing is strange and the jokes never fully materialize. And the fact that I don’t experience rage while watching it isn’t exactly high enough praise for me to say that the film is actually particularly good.

Overall rating: 4.5/10

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