MOVIE REVIEW : Stuck on an ‘Island’ With Thin Script

A film by Paul Cox is usually an occasion for optimism. Some of his richest--”Man of Flowers,” “My First Wife” and the evocation of Vincent van Gogh in “Vincent”--have combined humanity and intelligence with a lush visual, and musical, sensibility.

In his 1988 “Island” (at the Monica 4-Plex), as he captures the astonishing blues and whites of a Greek island, Cox’s eye is as sharp as always for the contrasts and pure visual sensuality of his setting. Unfortunately, he has only the thinnest sliver of a story to sustain such gorgeousness and a melodramatic sliver at that.

Three women cross paths on a small, unnamed Dodecanese island somewhere between Greece and Turkey. Arriving at the film’s opening is blond, Czech-born Eva (Eva Sitta), who has a perpetually troubled expression and who, like director Cox, has lived for many years as an emigrant to Australia.

The island’s permanent resident is Greek-born painter Marquise (Irene Papas), fierce, opinionated, life-embracing--the quintessential Papas character. The third is Sahana (Anoja Weerasinghe), visiting from Sri Lanka and desperate for news of her husband. He has slipped back to their civil war-torn country only days before, after making sure that she has a safe haven on the island.

During the few days the film covers, the women become confidantes and allies. With the acrimony of “My First Wife’s” divorce wars now behind him, Cox has returned to his generous view of women; one could only wish he’d followed up this empathy with a little more fiber to his storytelling.

As they muse about freedom, love and their deepest feelings about their homelands and families, the better actresses--Papas and Weerasinghe--are able to make their characters moving even though they are patently symbols. It is the splendid Weerasinghe, one of Sri Lanka’s major film stars, who gives the film’s end its real sense of heartbreak.

The wan Sitta--whose character seems able to kick a nasty drug habit almost overnight--remains remote and uninvolving and since what action there is centers around threats to her safety, it’s no place for such a neutral performance.

There’s nothing neutral, however, about Chris Heywood’s Janis, the deaf handyman and center of information for the island, who communicates by urgent noises and extremely efficient pantomime. Heywood is one of the Cox stock company but even dedicated Heywood fans, who remember his scuzzy, addicted painter in “Man of Flowers” or his hilarious thug in “Malcolm” for director Nadia Tass, may have trouble spotting him here. His disappearance into this romantically tortured Greek islander is amazing; one of those rare character turns that does not vanish into the excesses of caricature.

Every Cox movie has at least one shot that is a jaw-dropper. That moment in “Island” frames Eva at dusk, her blond hair glowingly lit, in a mirror set between two windows, and through those windows we can see the blue-pink-mauve afterglow of sunset. “Island” is a wonder visually; if you’re hungry for vicarious travel there are worse ways to see a Greek island than through Paul Cox’s eyes and the lens of his cinematographer, Michael Edols.

In every other respect, however, “Island” (Times-rated Mature for drug-related subject matter) remains a story whose complexities could be written on a matchbook cover, with room left over for the Draw Me girl.

‘Island’

Irene Papas: Marquise

Eva Sitta: Eva

Anoja Weerasinghe: Sahana

Chris Haywood: Janis

A Roxie Releasing Company release of an Illumination Films and Atlantis Releasing in association with Film Victoria presentation. Producers Paul Cox, Sanantha K. Naidu. Executive producers William Marshall, Jeannine Seawell. Writer/director Cox. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes.

Rating: Times-rated Mature for drug-related matter.