Review by Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Vladimir de Fontenay
Starring: Woody Norman, Swann Arlaud, Alma Pöysti, Ruaridh Mollica, Tuppence Middleton
It's hard to decide which person more tiresome: is it the one who has just completed some sort of self-imposed, would-be gruelling challenge like, say, a marathon or a mountain hike, and demands upon sharing how difficult it all was/how humbly amazing they are for completing it, waiting expectantly to bask in anticipated awe; or is it the person who insists on informing you about their experiences travelling? They're both awful drags, and so imagine the tedium of being button-holed by Tom (Swann Arlaud), half-wit egotist and rugged deuteragonist of Vladimir de Fontenay's (based on the autobiographical novella by David Vann, a contextual factor which will prove to be bizarrely pivotal to the narrative) My Father's Island (or Sukkwan Island in certain territories). This prick has only gone and taken his late-teen son out of school, and away from his mother (Tuppence Middleton), whom Tom is divorced from due to his infidelity (pathetic, childish behaviour), to live miles away from civilisation on a remote island in Norway as part of a misguided midlife crisis.
Fresh air, open skies, unbroken silence... Sounds almost halcyon doesn't it? Unless you're the 17-year-old school boy (Woody Norman) who has been uprooted from the defining social contexts of his life; pretty girlfriend, friends, music, etc; to sit around with this complete berk in the ice and snow (thinking about it now, the film doesn't make enough of Roy's late juvenilia - in the original novella, Roy was, chillingly as we'll discover, a more vulnerable 13). Going in blind, the film unspooling in spectacular tapestries of sapphire fjords, opal peaks, the tangerine glow of warming flames against freezing snow, you may resign yourself to a boy's own adventure of middle-class male bonding. There is an early indicator of Tom's smugly wayward parenting where he encourages his adolescent son to scream swear words across the water, consolidating the thrill of how isolated they are. As Roy tells some ice floes to fuck off, you get an irritating sense of Tom's entitlement and arrogance, that the conventions of polite society simply don't apply to him as he's better than them, and you.
So, when it all goes to shit I was both surprised and thrilled. The trouble begins with an ostensible bear attack on the little hut homestead, which savages the living space, food and short-wave radio which provides the duo's only link to the mainland (this happens when the two of them are hunting: little men with their big guns, stalking land they have no business being in at all #teamursus). It turns out, via a lovely visual joke of him perusing a "Camping in the Wild for Dummies" style book, that Tom really isn't as clued in as he really should be to commit to 1 months in a life endangering environment. My Father's Island is initially a grand comment on hubristic men who attempt to prove themselves through demonstrative psychical endeavour, yet who are woefully ill-equipped to deliver on their boasts (it's a bit similar to 2024's Eden, but I doubt Roy would have much to complain about if he was stuck on an island with Kirby, de Armas, Sweeney, et al etczzz).
Yet in a smash cut from a bright summer to the hard ice of winter, the film takes us deeper into darker psychological foliage. Via narcissistic extension, Tom is attempting to live through his son, in a confused attempt to both impress him and impress himself upon him, a sustained campaign that is both coercive and controlling. Somehow the unseen bear manages to smash the radio again, then the aerial "falls" off the roof, and then Tom himself "falls" off a cliff in a Munchausen ploy for Roy's devotion. The hut in the woods, the threat of nature; My Father's Island mutates towards a tense and compelling psychological thriller with satisfying elements of horror as hermit-4-justice Tom (we see him maudlin drunk, fruitlessly pleading via the radio for Tuppence to take him back) manipulates his increasingly terrified son. The father-son dynamic intrigues, as in horror this sort of domineering patriarchy usually translates to male to female oppression, yet Tom and Roy's relationship is complex in a different way, where blood is cooler and thicker than the freezing water which prohibits escape.
Not to spoil anything but I must mention the absolutely mental and pointless twist which happens following a brave and devastatingly plausible ending. It is bizarre. If you've seen the film, does the reveal even add up? Roy's phone was relatively current, no? And Ruaridh Mollica is billed as "Roy (adult)"... Looking at reviews (which I only ever do once I've got my own ideas confirmed), critics have taken agin this meta-misstep, and lashed out on the film at large. Their loss. Allow the silly crinkle as, from the landscape which morphs from impressive to intimidating, mirroring the slow curdle of Tom's sanity, the survivalist horror of My Father's Island offers cold comfort for genre audiences.
My Father's Island is in UK/ROI cinemas from July 3rd.
