Isolated communities have long attracted sociologists, anthropologists, and filmmakers. Their provincial mores, trenchant behaviors, and the rumor mill that carries news, slander, and everything in between provide more than ample fodder for the study of scientists and the invention of writers. The latter bring us Islander, set among a lobster fishing community in the Northeast.

Even in an isolated population, set apart from cosmopolitan fancies, progress has its way of leaking into the social fabric, part and parcel of which is gender equity. For some of the local women, the patriarchy, a byproduct of the island’s male-only fishing industry, and the island in which it breeds, are best viewed through a rear-view mirror. Such are the sentiments of Cheryl (Amy Jo Johnson), married to Eben Cole (Tom Hildreth), a lobsterman descended from a lineage long ensconced in the trade. He has persuaded his wife to keep their family in the community under special conditions, the most important being that he provides for them.

But his ability to keep this promise is jeopardized as a growing number of fishermen from the mainland encroach into territory reserved for islanders. Eben’s response to this breach of boundaries is more inflamed than those of his fellow lobstermen. Considered a hothead by his peers, he is nonetheless the only one, oddly enough, motivated to pursue this critical issue.

Taking things into his own hands, Eben decides to confront the trespassers face to face. His method, ill considered and pugnacious, indirectly results in a death. He is sentenced to five years in prison. His ignominy is magnified by a surprisingly unified and virulent condemnation from the community, his father and wife the least sympathetic of all. It is during his vulnerable first days behind bars that Cheryl chooses to remind him of his matrimonial pledge. This is the last visit he receives from her or the couple’s young daughter (Emma Ford) during his stay in prison.

Having paid his debt to society, Eben returns to the only home he has ever known, his house covered with indicting graffiti, his former friends shunning his company. His ex-wife has married another lobsterman. His daughter barely knows him.

Redemption should be the story here for Eben, the town that turned on him, and consequently the film. But there is little soul-searching by anyone. Remorse and forgiveness are alien to all involved.

As a result, the shamed lobsterman’s road back to respect is as curious as the one by which he lost it — a path carved as much by serendipity as by reflection or inner struggle. The townspeople, with a couple of exceptions, remain aloof. Characters avoid issues rather than confronting them, and that a sort of truce comes about. And while it may provide some kind of peace for the community, it leaves the audience still fishing for some resolution.