A likeable island comedy with three fine central performances and a weakness for laboured eccentricity. Louis Paxton gives loneliness and belonging some welcome attention, even when the jokes depend too heavily on the islanders being peculiar.
Louis Paxton’s The Incomer is a likeable comedy held together by three actors who know how far to push it. Its remote Scottish island and reclusive siblings offer plenty of opportunities for an outsider to be made uncomfortable. Paxton, who also writes, wants to let the odd behaviour be funny without dismissing the people responsible for it. He mostly manages that, though his fondness for their peculiarities sometimes outlasts the joke.
Domhnall Gleeson plays Daniel, the visitor, with enough charm to give us someone to follow into this unfamiliar company. Gayle Rankin’s Isla and Grant O’Rourke’s Sandy are siblings whose isolation has made ordinary social contact complicated. The three performances work because nobody treats the others as an excuse for a solo comic turn. Gleeson allows awkwardness to linger, O’Rourke helps make the sibling bond convincing, and Rankin supplies the unruly physical comedy. We laughed at Rankin’s fierceness, because she makes the siblings’ resistance to change look like exhausting physical work.
Pat Golan’s cinematography gives the rough island landscape enough attention to explain why people might feel attached to it. The place matters to the comedy: solitude here is attractive enough that the visitor cannot simply be assumed to know better. Production designers Arthur de Borman and Kezia Eales contribute to that appeal, making the islanders’ attachment to their surroundings credible. The animated passages give the folklore a different visual form, although the changes between animation and live action occasionally feel like another invitation to admire how unusual the film is.
Tom Kingston’s music gives the landscape a useful sense of exposure, helping the island feel less comfortable than a picturesque comedy might suggest. Brian Philip Davis’s editing lets some comic exchanges linger beyond the point at which we have understood the joke. At 102 minutes, this is hardly an ordeal, but some stretches feel longer than their comic material warrants. Paxton could have cut a few reminders of just how differently these people live.
The weaker jokes depend on the siblings not knowing what other people take for granted. A little of that establishes their isolation; too much makes them convenient targets, which sits awkwardly with Paxton’s affection for them. It also means that a film interested in loneliness occasionally settles for pointing out unusual behaviour and waiting for a laugh. The actors keep finding small signs of vulnerability, but the writing does not always give them enough to work with.
Within the familiar comedy of an outsider meeting a close community, Paxton’s useful choice is to allow discomfort on both sides. Daniel does not automatically know better, and the siblings’ attachment to their traditions deserves more than indulgent amusement. The film is at its most persuasive when the actors let the loneliness behind those habits become apparent. That gives the gentler scenes enough weight to survive the occasional lapse into cuteness. Give it an evening if difficult company and island folklore sound promising, but expect to wait through a few jokes that the cast deserved to have rewritten.
