Unrelated (2014)

Absolutely the worst movie.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Blame Antonioni for creating the sub-genre: middle class people on holiday which opens fissures in their relationships. In 'L'Avventura' this made him a star and allowed many to follow and create the tedious holiday group film.Unrelated does nothing more for the genre: it even has the same degree of uncommunication between actors which Antonioni had made a style and permits critics to talk of the "ineffable existential etc" although it can be boring when there is a lack of meta-guidance to the film, not just an inability to write or demonstrate drama and imply something by its absence.The scenery is quite pleasant, the actors reasonably able, though there is a terrible English 'kitchen-sink' realism with most of them and this level of dreary naturalism is like a millstone which sinks the entire effort.Watching rain drops slide down a window pane would be more engaging.

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.

The way that the film is shot and edited, particularly the long-shots, the dramatic use of artificial silences (where the soundtrack is dropped altogether) and the Attenboroughesque cut-to-cut montage of the landscape is a lot like something from Rohmer. A Summer's Tale, in particular. The director uses these techniques in a way which, as in Rohmer, complements the subtleties and natural feeling of the plot itself. There is a smooth marriage of the realistic content and this restrained and unobtrusive visual style. Perhaps only such metaphorical marriages can be so smooth.Superficially, the story, mise-en-scene and characters also are Rohmeresque. The drama is internal and psychological, the characters are drawn from the upper middle-classes, and they are- as is often the case in Rohmer's films- on holiday; variously enjoying themselves and wondering why they are not, or are incapable, of doing so. It's as though Marie Riviere's character in Rohmer's 'The Green Ray' didn't meet her true love in the train station in Bayonne(?) at the end of the film and is, to heartbreaking effect, trying once more some fifteen years later, post-menopausal, after a disappointing marriage.Though this is to romanticise the connection too much: Rohmer's film was mysterious, modern fairy-tale about love and its link to private superstitions. Joanna Hogg's film takes place on a rougher plane as earthly and scarred, to use the obvious simile, as the Tuscan fields against which it unfolds. It does successfully what, I think anyway, Michael Haneke's 'The Piano Teacher' failed to do, which is to show the vulnerability of the repressed, middle-aged woman whose world is almost demolished by a manipulative, handsome young man. But it is complex, and what upsets Anne most is not the rejection but the guilt of her subsequent revenge. Haneke used fairy-tale tropes, too- this time, the wicked, domineering, passive-aggressive mother (is this a wider tendency of male European directors?), in a highly stylised film, with a typically strident performance from Isabelle Huppert. Haneke always tries too hard to shock- whether its sniffing spunk-stained tissues in the peep-show or self-mutilation in the bathroom. It's strangely dull. Hogg shows Anne being delicately led astray, with a subtler cruelty: the expression of anticipation on her face when they play the "Pass the Orange" game, alone, will make you wince with your whole body.The performances are all good. The faults are very minor: the "youngs" are only slightly exaggerated. The husband of Anne's friend seemed potentially more sympathetic- his character might have been better-developed (but perhaps this was deliberate, and he is a "hen-pecked" husband).Thank you, Ms. Hogg, for a very truthful film.

If you wanted a villa holiday in Tuscany this summer and didn't have time, go to this film and by the end you will feel you have spent a fortnight there. Joanna Hogg has created an upper-middle class version of a Mike Leigh film at his slowest. It's beautifully done, and the fortnight is mostly enjoyable, unless you squirm at the sight of drunken Brits abroad or the sound of the upper-middle classes (I developed a thick skin for both of these a long time ago, myself). The characterisation is subtle, verging on invisible. There's very little intellectual content or sparkling conversation, surely unrealistic in a film about the chattering classes? Perhaps it's the prodigious amount of alcohol that's consumed. All this keeps the focus on Anna, on holiday from her unhappy situation at home, and the cheerfully pie-eyed teenagers that she hangs out with.The movie was very thin on plot, yet there did seem to be inconsistencies on the departure date for some of the party. I doubt I'll watch it again to check this though; once is nice, but enough.