SECURITY FLAWS

FROM THE START OF THE WHISTLERS, DETECTIVE CRISTI is at sea. He stands aboard a ferry making its way to La Gomera, a mountainous isle of volcanic origin, the so-called “pearl of the Canary Islands.” Once docked, the detective (played by Vlad Ivanov) rendezvouses with his contact, Paco (Agustí Villaronga), a man he’s never met, who doesn’t share his mother tongue. In broken English Cristi is instructed to disable his phone—the police are listening—and spirited away by car to a secluded villa where the only person he knows, or thinks he knows, is a beguiling woman named Gilda (Catrinel Marlon). She wears red, as she did when they’d met back in Bucharest, but she assures him that their previous intimacy was all a ruse. Of utmost importance is that the detective learns el siblo gomero, a language comprised entirely of whistling, originated by the island’s indigenous Guanches and adopted by Spanish settlers in the 16th century. Paco tells him to imagine he’s placing a pistol in his mouth and firing it out his ear. It’s the best technique for whistling.

The opening scenes of , punctuated by color-coded title cards and set to the bounding mid-tempo rumble of Iggy Pop’s Antonioni-referencing “The Passenger,” immediately suggest that our hero is being