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Unrelated (2007)

Director: Joanna Hogg

Time Out rating

Average user rating

12 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

One villa outside Siena, two fractured and well-heeled families on holiday and a woman who arrives late to the party leaving some of her sorrows behind her in Britain but still carrying excess emotional baggage…

‘Unrelated’ is the first feature from television director Joanna Hogg and is a surprising, sensitive and compelling study of upper middle-class mores and middle-age hang-ups. Hogg casts the unknown Kathryn Worth as Anna, a sad soul and old friend of solid Verena (Mary Roscoe), a no-nonsense home counties sort of lady who’s enjoying a break with her new husband, another male friend and their various teenage children. A hidden trauma is making Anna behave oddly: she drifts towards the kids and away from the adults, and is especially taken by Etonian Oakley (Tom Hiddleston), the oldest, whose maturity isn’t as developed as Anna’s behaviour implies.

The holiday setting offers a theatre in which Hogg plays out this intriguing study of a damaged woman whose surroundings and companions offer her few favours. It’s true that some of the acting and dialogue, at times awkwardly improvised, wanders from the precision shown elsewhere.

Also, Hogg is better at concealing than she is at revealing: the best moments are quiet and suggestive and a final, emotional unfurling of Anna’s crisis doesn’t offer the power or the satisfaction it should. Mostly, though, Hogg displays a welcome desire to draw on global film influences and ignore the unwritten rules of what British cinema should or should not seek to achieve, especially in the realm of films about the monied and unsympathetic.

Author: Dave Calhoun

Time Out London Issue 1987, 17-23 Sept, 2008

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User reviews of this film

Jools said...

Posted on Dec 07 2011 23:58 Only just caught up with this film. Utterly believable, subtle and brilliant, quiet acting. Kathryn Worth is remarkable and Tom Hiddleston is obviously a star waiting in the wings

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Jay said...

Posted on Dec 11 2010 23:02 Yes, this film is "slight" - slight as the blade of a kitchen knife.

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Bartleby said...

Posted on Nov 15 2010 09:03 This is a quite brilliant little study of emotional despair. Far subtler than Mike Leigh's 'Another Year', with which it shares some uncanny parallels. ('Unrelated' was made
three years earlier). A real hidden gem.

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James said...

Posted on Jan 18 2010 22:41 Beautifully photographed, great acting. Really believable characters.Look forward to the sequel

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ym said...

Posted on Jul 27 2009 10:00 Tedious and annoying characters. Cringed throughout the movie and couldn't wait for it to end.

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Tiresias said...

Posted on Jun 06 2009 07:11 A beautiful, subtle film, haunting in its melancholy and quite exraordinary in its natural acting style. Kathyn Worth can express a thousand passing emotions, silently, in the fleeting expressions of her face. This is a deceptively complex and beautifully constructed film and one which, despite comparisons to French films on a similar subject is much more memorable and original.

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md said...

Posted on May 31 2009 12:44 DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME WITH THIS MOVIE!
GO ON HOLIDAY AND MAKE YOUR OWN MOVIE. IT WILL BE MORE "MEANINGFUL". ANYTHING YOU FILM WILL BE MORE INTERESTING THAN THIS.

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ed said...

Posted on Feb 06 2009 13:13 I saw this last night at a Q&A screening in Salisbury, Wilts.
Pleasantly suprised at seeing sympathetic characters against a backdrop of privilege. Most of the characters where wankers, but I loved the lead role. Such a complex character. I liked th cutting from rowdy scenes to scenes of quiet. No soundtrack gave it a cam-corder feel and didn;t help lift it out of it;s low budget trappings. Definitely felt continental in it;s direction. Good outcome ot the story although, like the reviewer, it wasn't as well acted as it could've been.
Worth another look and totally different from a just about every film from the UK. A low budget Stealing Beauty with added realism.
The family were believable. UKs full of prats like that. They hang aorund Windsor & Eton. rar rar rar

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Peter R said...

Posted on Nov 13 2008 17:42 Disappointing.Drawn by the enthusiastic reviews I found the film slight and unconvincing. How much more subtly this scenario might have been explored by a French or Italian director.

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Stuart R said...

Posted on Oct 21 2008 20:18 This is a beautiful and subtle film

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Mary A.E. said...

Posted on Oct 19 2008 11:07 Steve H is right: this is a truly appalling film. It clunks along: tedious, poorly acted, uninvolving - with some very heavy-handed attempts to look and sound 'meaningful'. Can't understand why it is being so well-reviewed.

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SteveH said...

Posted on Oct 15 2008 12:45 Pointless and poorly acted (improvised?) low budget ramble into the holiday video of boring, unbelievable characters; I was happy when this holiday was over.

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