''Most Beautiful Island'' is a 2017 American

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

written and directed by

Ana Asensio Ana Asensio is an actress and filmmaker born in Madrid and currently living in New York City. Career Asensio got her professional start acting in children's plays while she was studying Acting and Philosophy at Complutense University of Madrid. ...

. The film stars Ana Asensio, Natasha Romanova, David Little, Nicholas Tucci,

Larry Fessenden Laurence T. Fessenden (born March 23, 1963) is an American actor, producer, writer, director, film editor, and cinematographer. He is the founder of the New York based independent production outfit Glass Eye Pix. His writer/director credits inclu ...

and Caprice Benedetti. The film was released on November 3, 2017, by

Orion Pictures Orion Releasing, LLC (Trade name, doing business as Orion Pictures) is an American film production and film distribution, distribution company owned by the Amazon MGM Studios subsidiary of Amazon (company), Amazon. It was founded in 1978 as Ori ...

and

Samuel Goldwyn Films Samuel Goldwyn Films, LLC is an American film company that licenses, releases and distributes art-house, independent and foreign films. It was founded by Samuel Goldwyn Jr., the son of the Hollywood business magnate/mogul, Samuel Goldwyn. Th ...

. ''Most Beautiful Island'' was nominated for the John Cassavetes Award at the 2018 Film Independent Spirit Awards.

Plot summary

Luciana is an

illegal immigrant Illegal immigration is the migration of people into a country in violation of that country's immigration laws, or the continuous residence in a country without the legal right to do so. Illegal immigration tends to be financially upward, wi ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. Phone calls to her family indicate that she is living in hiding due to some past transgression in her native

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

for which her mother assures her she's been forgiven but which Luciana does not want to return to face. Due to her undocumented status, Luciana is forced to work menial, cash-pay jobs, such as babysitting and sign waving at a fast food restaurant. Through the latter job she meets Olga, a

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

n emigre who seems to live a more lavish lifestyle despite herself being undocumented. After Luciana suffers a number of personal and economic setbacks, Olga offers her an opportunity to fill in her for at her second job. Luciana agrees, although Olga does not reveal the nature of the work beyond providing Luciana an address and instructions to arrive in evening wear. Unable to afford the proper clothes, Luciana clandestinely vandalizes an outfit at a local boutique and convinces the store to sell it to her at a discount. Luciana arrives at the address Olga provided her, where she's led into a basement, provided a locked purse, and given a second address to go to late that evening. Unable to pay cab fare, Luciana tricks a driver into providing her a ride, then hides her belongings in a garbage can when the

bouncer A bouncer (also known as a door supervisor) is a type of security guard, employed at licensed or sanctioned venues such as bars, nightclubs, cabaret clubs, strip clubs and casinos. A bouncer's duties are to provide security, to check legal ag ...

demands she only bring the locked purse inside. Luciana is taken into a subterranean chamber, where she's made to stand in an unfurnished room along with several other women—including Olga—all in black cocktail dresses and holding identical purses. When Luciana asks Olga what's happening, Olga tells her that she wanted money and this was a way to make it. Luciana witnesses women being led into another room, with some leaving holding large stacks of money; others fail to leave after emitting frightened screams. Asking to use the bathroom, Luciana attempts to escape, but is brought back to the room with the other women. Eventually, she and Olga are brought into a chamber with a glass coffin surrounded by men and women. A master of ceremonies explains that the venue is an underground betting parlor where individuals wager on the outcome of extreme scenarios. Opening Olga and Luciana's purses, he removes a pair of venomous spiders, and explains that each woman will take turns lying nude in the coffin with the spider on top of them for a predetermined interval; the other woman will be tasked with making sure the spider maintains skin contact. Luciana goes first, successfully lying still and winning her round. During her round, Olga begins panicking and begging for the spider to be removed, but Luciana saves her by exploiting a loophole in the game's rules and holding the spider herself. Olga technically wins her round and both women are paid large sums of money for their success. In the aftermath of the game, the head of the organization praises Luciana for her ingenuity and tells Olga that she will be her replacement. Luciana takes her money and flees, collecting her belongings from the trash.

Cast

as Luciana *Natasha Romanova as Olga *David Little as Doctor Horowitz *

Nicholas Tucci Nicholas Whitney Tucci (April 3, 1981 – March 3, 2020) was an American actor. Early life Tucci was born in Middletown, Connecticut in 1981. He attended Middletown High School (Connecticut), Middletown High School in his hometown, and earned a ba ...

as Niko *

as Rudy * Caprice Benedetti as Vanessa *Anna Myrha as Nadia * Ami Sheth as Benedita *Miriam A. Hyman as Bikie *Sara Visser as Katarin *Natalia Zvereva as Ewa *Sorika Horng as Mai *Fenella A. Chudoba as Alina * David Serero as Dominic

Release

The film premiered at

South by Southwest South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has conti ...

on March 12, 2017. On June 20, 2017,

and

acquired distribution rights to the film. The film was released on November 3, 2017, by Orion Pictures and Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Reception

On review aggregator website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...

, the film has an approval rating of 93% based on 44 reviews with an average rating of 7.01/10. The site's consensus reads: "''Most Beautiful Island'' plunges audiences into a little-seen sector of society, with writer-director Ana Asensio's fearless performance leading the way". On

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, the film has a score of 73 out of 100 based on 11 critics indicating "generally favorable reviews".

References

External links

* * {{Rotten Tomatoes, most_beautiful_island, Most Beautiful Island 2017 films 2017 drama films American drama films Films set in New York City 2017 directorial debut films 2010s English-language films 2010s American films