A Bootsie Kidd Review

Tanya’s Island is a love story like so many others, fraught with jungle wilds and imaginary gorilla lovers. Girl meets boy. Girl falls in love with boy. Boy spurns girl. Girl turns to primal nature in pursuit of independence, passion, and fulfillment. Boy changes mind, decides he wants girl and that girl needs him. Girl decides she’ll stick with primal nature in pursuit of independence, passion, and fulfillment.

We open with Tanya going for a run. She is the very picture of strength, independence, capability, hard work, and happens to gorgeous as fuck. This is THE Vanity we’re talking about here, so you know she’s a creature like no other. Tanya is an actress starring in a new King Kong film when her director, Kelly (Mariette Lèvesque), approaches her to state how tired she looks, that her career is more important than her personal life, and to get her shit together, but Kelly’s all smiles and warmth so we’re meant to take it as well-meaning pressure and polite disinterest in Tanya’s personal needs. Distressed, Tanya turns to her artist lover, Lobo (Richard Sargent), who greets Tanya with a pretty brutal goodbye saying he won’t let her “own him”. Tanya seems so wholly unaware of how spectacular she is, in and of herself, seeking love, acceptance, and support from people who have no clue of how nor inclination to give it to her. If it was beauty that killed the beast, Tanya plays roles as both.

Suddenly, a sensationally bizarre b&w scene pops up momentarily within a shower depicting Tanya and Lobo covered in blood while Tanya screams and clammers to escape. The scene ends as suddenly as it arrived, and the next moment we’re in a lavish, morbidly decorated home where Tanya seems to be packing for an escape from this shit when another presents itself. She hears heavy panting coming from up the stairs. As she travels a hall lined with footlights, we hear waves crashing, and upon handling an illuminated seashell, the music crescendos, Tanya opens a door flooded with light and fog juice, and we’re whisked away to sepia-toned, butt-neked Tanya fondling and fake-jogging for the duration of the opening credits.

Tanya has imagined herself to an island that seems to be her own paradise. And hey! Lobo’s there, but he seems enthralled with her and they live, and fuck, and love their days away. She even has her own beach pony to ride around on just in case it wasn’t obvious enough how sexy she and this island are. Only Lobo still isn’t happy. He gets bored and wants to keep exploring the island. Okay, fair enough. It’s a show strength and character when a movie is realistic enough to concede that even paradise has potential for monotony. Lobo’s an artist in want of new inspiration, a yearner, and this is Tanya’s Paradise not Lobo’s, after all, so let’s give the guy the benefit of the doubt, for now.

Once they move their tent and relentless chimes to another part of an island, Tanya begins to suspect there’s something on the island with them, tells Lobo of this fear, and Lobo mocks, tricks, and scares the shit out of her. Goddamnit, Lobo! Tanya has had it, y’all, trekking back into the jungle finding herself alone in the wilds of her own imagination. The landscapes are breathtaking, and the further she ventures the more brave and secure she becomes, adorning herself with a crown of flowers as if finally fucking realizes she is the queen of all she surveys. It is an especially gratifying, albeit, simple sequence. As Tanya wanders even deeper in the caverns of her paradise, she comes upon the creature lurking in trees. A gorilla with sterling blue eyes that she befriends and names Blue (Don McLeod).

Despite Tanya reuniting with fuck boy Lobo, he gets butt-hurt over not having Tanya’s undivided attention and the now-apparent fact she doesn’t need his sour-grapes ass for fulfillment, and he attempts to rape her while mocking her desires and affection for Blue. However, Blue is there to thwart that stank dick allowing for Tayna’s escape. But, of course, this Gauguin wannabe motherfucker HAS to win. Despite Tanya’s constant compassion and tenderness, he literally cages her primitive nature, entrapping Blue, demanding that “my rules” are to be obeyed. Lobo barks orders while Tanya tries to salvage what remaining happiness she can in her own fantasy. Her rage intensifies with Lobo’s upgrading abuse until she frees Blue inciting Lobo to construct ANOTHER literal fucking prison around he and Tanya, claiming it as protection. Now it is up to Blue, Tanya’s manifestation of her own wild spirit and independent nature to free her from the colossal douchewad’s clutches.

Watching Lobo’s transformation from everyday self-involved smugness into the filthy, primitive, insecure, patriarchal, rapist piece of shit that was lurking just beneath his surface with Blue taunting Lobo from outside the cage makes for an intense ride. In a frantic sequence of what-the-shit, Blue breaks Tanya free, Lobo is left crying out in fear of loneliness, Tanya fleas deciding she doesn’t need Blue or Lobo resulting in her primal savior Blue eventually catching and beating her to death rather than letting her live independent of them.

And wouldn’t you know, it was all just a dream! Ugh. She wakes up to the starkly empty room realizing wounds from her nightmarish encounter. She has a blank canvas to work with from here, but scars remain and need time and care to heal. Our minds construct prisons within prisons as well as the villains and heroes to navigate them, and circumstances idealized in the mind that may have been some pretty unhealthy shit can be overcome for living to fight and love another day.

All in all, Tanya’s Island has a lot more substance than expected given other’s reports! Moral of the story for us and Tanya, listen but, in the end, rely on your own judgement and experience. Sure there’s sultry sexin’ and plenty of bare-backin the beach pony, but all of it fits within the context of Tanya’s frame of paradise. It’s thoughtful AND evocative which is especially remarkable given that these two things are never mutually exclusive though typically treated as such in cinematic critique.  Director Alfred Sole and the solid performances from Vanity, Sargant, and McLeod creatively reimagined important subjects, and it is one that I hope eventually receives the nods it deserves. Check it out for yourself at Cap City Video Lounge or your local movie rental store!