Island

Island is subversive at its core: we follow a couple – Rona and Adam – and their young children, as they move into a condo in a nameless suburban town. Rona withers away in this cold, sterile environment and suffocates equally in her relationship. Until, one day, she meets a female neighbor who reveals to her a hidden world of sexual encounters in which quite a few people from the building seem to participate.

Rid of romanticism, matured through life’s complexities, Elinor’s writing questions the very foundations of relationships and desire. Both crude in the way it shows bodies, and acute in how it addresses and looks at its female protagonist Rona, Island catches us off-guard, avoiding cliched behaviors to share a thoroughly mature, feminine, and intelligent outlook. The tone of the film, though crude and, blasting everything in its wake, is never dry nor cynical. On the contrary, Elinor’s project is caustic, generating a playful energy in which the couple becomes a playground for new rules to be defined.