Unrelated

I found this film on the MUBI platform and after a bit of apprehension, I decided to give it a go. It had all the existential angst and cathartic denouements that one would associate with an art-house feature that is out these days. Still, this film manages to provide a mildly amusing look at a group of English holidaymakers in a pastoral Tuscan retreat. Tuscany is as much of a character in the film as Kathryn Worth's Anna. I quite liked Joanna Hogg's use of camera, often introverted yet probing with its longing close-ups of Anna and Oakley. She removes the camera away from the action and towards the characters, subtly highlighting their emotional frailties and thriving insecurities. Shots are consumed, cigarettes are burnt and there is a whole lot of fun and games yet the recessive malaise is hardly disguised. Stylistically, there are hints of David Gordon Green in a few of the scenes not to mention the looming figures of Bergman and Antonioni. My only problem with the film despite its languid appeal is its derivative nature. This is an issue that she largely solved in her much better second feature, Archipelago. A promising debut nevertheless.

This is a hugely impressive debut by writer/director Joanna Hogg. It is an uncomfortably realistic film in that you feel at times that you are being a voyeur and eavesdropper at real events. That the characters are so realistic is a tribute to Hogg's skills and to the quality of the actors. In that respect I was reminded of Mike Leigh who also makes movies that really do seem to intrude upon and depict the real world. In a sense, of course, not all of us go to see movies to see life at its most real and (in this case) in the raw. There is nothing escapist or improbable about the unfolding of events in Unrelated nor are any of the characters unlikely depictions either. More's the pity for a more ghastly bunch of arrogant, insular, selfish sons and daughters of privilege it would be hard to find. Not too hard actually in honesty for this type of English man and woman is all too commonly seen in the leafy suburbs and the Tory Blue counties. Here they are summering in Tuscany with a holiday lifestyle as empty as it is privileged. So empty that they resort to infantile games to pass the time between meals and indulge in banter that suggests that they have libraries in inverse proportion to their wealth – which is considerable.

There are two main themes. First the battle between the "olds" the forty-something adults and the younger set in their late teens. Key conflict is that between George, a prosperous prat with a high regard for himself and a low regard for his son Oakley with whom he has an alpha-male contest. The second theme is that of the lonely, confused and menopausal visitor Anna and how she relates as something of an outsider to the rest of the party. She is going through a crisis with her husband who was supposed to accompany her to Italy but who in the end stays at home. Does she want to leave him, he her or do they both want a new start or to "try again"? The unfolding of this happens as we listen in to one side, Anna's, of a series of stressed mobile phone conversations. Anna is clearly something of a "poor relation" to the main characters who are wealthier and for self-assured than she is – albeit in a repulsively conceited way. This applies especially to Oakley who is attractive in a pre-Raphaelite sort of way and for whom Anna quite soon has urges – not withstanding the full generation gap in age between them. There is a trip to Sienna during which Anna certainly flirts self-consciously with Oakley and maybe he with her – we cannot be sure of his motives, until later.

Joanna Hogg films the whole story in a cleverly under-stated way. Even the lovely Tuscany countryside and the beauties of Sienna are toned down by the use of a gentle filter – at no time are we in a travelogue in "Unrelated". The climax of the film is an event which could have been serious, but actually wasn't. When George works out what happened in this event he blows his top in an overemotional way with Oakley who he blames for what occurred. It is a pretty nasty scene which we hear but do not see - a very clever device that further enhances the verisimilitude.

Is "Unrelated" a film with a "cause" to promote? Probably not unless it is to confirm that at its most supercilious and uncaring man's nature is pretty malicious. We know that before we see the film of course, but what the film succeeds in doing is to show that a group of people who would probably regard themselves as being educated and enlightened are in fact hypocritical, selfish and irredeemably self-centred – especially in their treatment of their visitor who is subjected to the minimum of courtesy and the maximum of patronising contempt. Anna is the only character we care about and we do feel sorry for her – and there is some satisfaction that at the end of the film it is she, after the revelation about what has caused her current melancholy, looks to have some resolution in her life. And the rest of the party move on, no doubt unaware of Anna's turmoil, and back to a world at home in leafy England where they can parade and pomp about how "heavenly" Tuscany was again.

I'll start right off by saying this movie won't be for everyone. It's a very slow movie, the kind where you're watching people NOT say things for hours and where there's minimal plot. But it's also the type of movie where if you connect with the characters you REALLY connect with them and for me it was a pleasure to spend time with these characters.

The main character of Hogg's Unrelated is Anna a woman who is in the early stages of middle age. Anna and her husband have been invited by her oldest friend Verena to join Verena's family and extended family (made up of three adults and four teenagers) in a villa in the Italian countryside where they spend their summers. Only Anna shows up without her partner and soon enough, rather than spend time with the "olds" Anna is adopted into the friend group of the "youngs", the teens that are young enough to be her children. Drinking and getting high irresponsibly she forms a light flirtation with Oakley, the ring leader of the pack who, despite his youth, has an air of authority and control which stands out in contrast to the somewhat shy and nervous Anna.

For those willing to give Unrelated a chance I will say that is one of the finest meditations on adulthood, particularly adult womanhood, I've ever seen. If the first half of the film is Anna drifting about with the youngs, innocently capturing a youth she never quite had, the second half is her painful growing up.

Anna (Kathryn Worth) is having marital problems and spending the summer holiday family friends Verena (Mary Roscoe), Charlie (Michael Hadley) and George (David Rintoul) at their Tuscan villa. She starts to spend more time with the younger teenage children Archie (Harry Kershaw), Badge (Emma Hiddleston), Jack (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) and Oakley (Tom Hiddleston). They smoke some weed and crash a car. The sexual tension boils over as she flirts with the leader of the kids Oakley.

It's a British mumbletalk indie. I wish the relationships between the characters are laid out more clearly early on. It would help decipher and build a backstory to their connections if they have any. They need to throw in a few lines like "I haven't seen you since you were this tall." It would help to build tension in the first half of the movie. The older people also need to have some in-depth talk in the first half. It would fill out their characters. Anna has very curt conversations with Verena. This feels like a bunch of strangers and it's not until the second half that things get a little bit interesting.

'Unrelated' has an intriguing premise: a forty-something woman, on the run from an unhappy relationship, takes refuge in a Tuscan villa with an old (but not, it seems, particularly close) friend; and in fact, prefers to spend her time with the younger generation, perhaps trying to re-imagine the youth that got away. There's lots of potential here, and some acute observation, but also some flatness: director Joanna Hogg skilfully captures the mood of a particularly awful house-party, but it's not the sort of place that feels particularly enticing, and the combination of Anna's stupidity and the spoiled obnoxiousness of the beautiful youths who entrance her make for an unappealing and painful combination. If the story falls short of neat conclusions, it also falls short of what normally defines a good story - and the excessive use of static camera shots, leaving the viewer like a guest who'd rather be somewhere else, isn't especially subtle. Overall, this might have been better at half the length: there are some worthwhile ideas, but scene after scene of Anna sitting, painfully on the edge of a social gathering, feels unnecessary.