Film Reviews

Unrelated

• Rating:
• Director: Joanna Hogg
• Starring: Emma Hiddleston
• Details: UK / 100mins (15A).

Anna (Worth) arrives at her friend's villa in the Italian countryside escaping an unhappy marriage. Her friend's teenage kids are at the villa and Anna takes more than a passing interest in Oakley (Hiddleston), the eldest son. They begin to flirt and a relationship is slowly teased out, but it's just a distraction and Anna needs to confront her feelings about husband Alex.

For a debutant, Hogg shows a lot of promise; a patient storyteller who doesn't use 'wow' tactics - fast pacing, clever camera angles, sex (although there is some nudity, it's not sexual) - and is confident enough in the characters and the actors portraying them to interest the audience. There's a natural, almost documentary approach to the proceedings, as if this story is going on regardless of whether Hogg's camera is rolling or not. This 'patience', however, can bore an audience senseless.

Not a lot happens in Unrelated and Hogg hopes that Anna is an interesting enough character to carry the plot. She is and she isn't: she is retrospectively as we find out a lot more about Anna in the closing 15 minutes than we do for the previous 85, and if we knew more about her at the outset we might feel more for her plight. Hogg understands the language of film, saying more with her camera (which she never moves) than dialogue; she frames Anna tightly, suggesting her life is suffocating her, while most filmmakers couldn't resist a 'my life is suffocating me' throwaway line. Hogg will go on to make better films than this.

Review by Gavin Burke