Review: The Brando

What's the deal here?
The Brando is a remote, ultra-polished island hideaway with smart eco-credentials—a love song to the South Pacific.

Set the scene for us.
The palest and most pellucid-glimmering blue lagoon seen from high above as you approach, in the hotel’s private plane. A head-lollingly remote atoll, Disneyishly outlandish in its technicolor. Like a shot from The Little Mermaid.

What’s the story here?
Marlon Brando came across the atoll when scouting for locations for his 1963 movie Mutiny on the Bounty. For centuries it had been owned by Tahitian royalty (daughters were sent there to be rested before marriage) and then gifted by a king to an American dentist. When Brando first saw it, a blind relative of that dentist was living on the atoll alone, with nothing but a shortwave radio and several cats…he persuaded her to sell, with cash and an apple pie.

Fascinating stuff! What can we expect from the bedrooms?
Stand alone villas are hidden into trees, with your own long stretch of pink-white sand. More glass and tiles than bamboo and thatch—super-clean, slick.

How about the food and drink?
The Japanese and European restaurants serve un-florid, fish-based plates, using herbs and fruit and vegetables grown on the atoll. For breakfast, try the truly aromatic honey produced by tame stingless bees that live on one of the 12 motus (little islands) surrounding the lagoon. They occasionally land woozily on your arms if you’re sitting next to purple-bright bushels of bougainvillea.

Anything stand out about the service?
You’re met off the plane by staff who take you for a cold drink at the bar right by the lagoon. The check-in couldn’t feel less check-in-like—given you can’t leave the atoll of your own accord, nobody is (ever) chasing you for signatures and passports and documentation. You’re driven to your villa, shown around, then left to it. Room service is super-swift. The down-time feeling immediate.

What sort of person stays here?
You may never see half of them. Privacy is keynote. Drowsy honeymooners; now and again a group of Tahitian wildlife experts, alighted on the atoll to examine a particularly impressive giant clam. Or an historian of Polynesian culture giving a lecture about tattooing, or the time Captain Bligh stopped on the atoll to look for the mutineer Fletcher Christian. Some nights, a sudden flurry of dancing and cocktails. Others, nothing but the stars.

What’s the location like?
It’s the atoll, and that’s all. Just this one hotel, and all the other islands entirely unoccupied. Now and again you might see a private yacht sail into the lagoon for a curious mooch, but otherwise absolute privacy and uncluttered luxury.

Anything we missed?
You will not be bitten by mosquitoes on Tetiaroa. There’s a species of greedy tilapia that has been fostered in the freshwater ponds on the motus that gobble mosquito larvae. You notice this especially in the spa, which is built gorgeously around one such pool, the treatment rooms entirely open to the breeze. No suspicious whine in the air, no burning of pungent oils to put off biters. And the air-con is all water-powered—100 percent renewable.

And the one thing you’d change?
That it’s a once-in-a-lifetime destination. Any attempt to repeat such outlandish perfection might not be possible (or advisable).

Is it worth it—and why?
There is no location like this. Nowhere with the history or absurd beauty. What was an obsession for Marlon Brando (he adored the place) has been shaped into something almost eccentrically perfect.