Unrelated

The antithesis of all Shirley Valentine stands for.

You've been quarreling with your husband, and things aren't looking too rosy in your future. So, you jump at the chance of going on holiday with your best friend to Italy, with her extended family. While there, you feel a bit of a midlife crisis coming on... and start hanging around with your mate's son and his clique rather than your fellow 'oldies'. Because you got drunk with them a few times, and he saw you naked emerging from a swimming pool, you think there might be sparks between you and this guy... who's about 25 years your junior. But when you offer to spend the night with him, you discover all these dreams are pure fantasy. Depression quickly sets in, and in a fit or rage you announce a secret to your friend that you promised to keep hidden about a crashed car. Whoops.

The heroine (played by Kathryn Worth) is quite a pathetic case, and I felt myself inwardly cringe as she gallivanted around with youngsters with whom she had nothing in common, in a vain attempt to appear 'cool'. NEWSFLASH: you're not 18 anymore. And following around teenagers, putting on a demeanor so fake even a blind man could see it is the height of desperation. I'm not saying it's time to whip out the ol' pipe and slippers, but maybe communicating with your own age group is a better idea than embarrassing yourself in front of a completely different generation who probably wonder "What the hell's going on"? Don't get me started on her failed seduction of her so-called BFF's kid either. CREEPY.

Anyway, it's a good story (if a little long-winded) and when the s**t hits the fan, it turns into something evilly compelling, like a multi-storey car crash. The happy conclusion felt a bit forced, everything was solved a little too easily for my liking. But it's still an honest, admirable little indie feature, and a cautionary tale for all those middle-aged ladies who try to relive their misbegotten youth... 6/10

"Hogg's disinterested agglomeration of realism and gradualism is not novel (many an auteur flourishes on various soils with similar felicity, like Hong Sang-soo, Kelly Reichardt, whose names are just off the top of my head), but it is practical in terms of filmmaking, the camera is static, settings are simple, score-free, no extra-lighting needed, even during nighttime, it has a point-and-shoot expediency of a cottage industry. Distilling human activities exclusively through her rigid frame, both films reveal truth with a clinical discernment. Anna's step-by-step abandon meets with a cavalier response, Oakley is a tease, he knows how to titillate the opposite sex and will not let Anna off his hook before she capitulates, then, to her utter chagrin, he walks away like a champion, and naturally this chapter is closed, Oakley hones his skill of enchantment, but Anna receives a blow to her already distressed middle-age crisis, casual cruelty is blithely exposed. Then, you might not sympathize with Anna, because she is blinded by vanity and obviously operates against her best judgement, also Hogg really foregrounds a 24-year-old Hiddleston's hedonistic youthfulness (even the camera forgoes its immobility trying to catch his exuberance and Adonis gorgeousness), and it is always takes two to tango, at her mature age, Anna should've known better."

read my full review on my blog: Cinema Omnivore, thanks.

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.

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.

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.