Winner of the Fipresci Award at the London Film Festival, Unrelated introduces director Joanna Hogg as a British talent with plenty of talent for a bright future. The film’s central character Anna (Kathryn Worth) is pushing middle-age and facing a fast-sinking marriage when she joins an old friend on her family’s holiday to Italy. More comfortable with the young adults in the family, she finds herself enticed by her friend’s son Oakley (Tom Hiddleston) but she’s soon forced to confront her emotional turmoil head on.
Lingering static shots are used to great effect to delve into Anna’s psyche and the family dynamic, while the Worth and Hiddleston’s performances communicate huge statements with the most subtle of glances. Thankfully Hogg prefers an intimate character study over a morality tale, making Unrelated a subtle yet engrossing hybrid of bourgeois family values and the murky depths of loneliness and regret.
