Film review: Islands' Filipino-Canadian story works a subtle, deeply humanistic magic
The film follows the paralyzingly shy Joshua, who’s devoted his life to supporting his parents
Rogelio Balagtas plays desperately shy Joshua in Islands.
Islands opens April 15 at VIFF Centre, followed by a filmmaker Q&A with Martin Edralin. It screens with the short documentary Kalinga (Care)
SOMETIMES THE QUIETEST films have the most profound effects. That’s the case for Martin Edralin’s Islands, an immigrant story told in aching restraint.
In the smallest humanistic details, the director builds empathy for the central character. Middle-aged Joshua (Rogelio Balagtas) leads a painfully lonely existence, living with his aging Filipino Canadian parents in anonymous Southern Ontario suburbs. He works as a janitor by day and serves as a companion-caregiver to them by night; his only leisure time is spent walking on his basement treadmill, literally stuck in one spot.
His culture celebrates family, and he longs to have a wife and kids—even though he knows his time has probably run out.
The problem is that he is paralyzingly introverted, praying every night for God to get rid of his shyness. He won’t even join his coworkers for lunch, no matter how many times they invite him. Why does he politely decline them, stick his adobo in the microwave, and eat at the table alone? He’s a fascinating character to unravel.
Joshua inhabits a kind of melancholic limbo until his parents start to fail, marking the arrival of an unexpected guest: a female cousin, Marisol (Sheila Lotuaco), whose own experiences as a domestic worker abroad lead her to form a special bond with Joshua—and to try to encourage him to come out of his shell before life slips away.
The beauty of Edralin’s storytelling is the way it holds back patiently on small details. Who was Joshua back in the Philippines? And how old is he, anyway? Edralin treats the story not with sweetness, but with a bracing honesty that offsets the film’s tenderness—even in addressing Joshua’s obvious sexual frustration. Newcomers Balagtas and Lotuaco hand in nuanced performances, deftly hinting at the caverns of pain that lie just behind their characters’ kind smiles.
Edralin gives it all an assured look—livening up his minimalistic tableaux with offbeat details: Jesus figurines on Joshua’s bureau or the gaudy wallpaper that adorns his parents’ home.
You’re left with the deep sense that there could be thousands of Joshuas and Marisols out there, left on the margins, too timid to fit in, sacrificing their lives to support family. But if that sounds bleak, Islands has the subtlest of surprises in store. Edralin's greatest trick is leaving us with a sense of unsentimental uplift—not in the way your heart might yearn for, but a finale that will leave you, and Joshua, with a big, fat smile.
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