That was an excellent one.

Just perfect...

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This movie has a group of unconnected people (despite being "family" and "friends") who never do or say anything, on vacation in a villa in Italy, in one scene after another of them situated in places (e.g. eating pizza, at a pub, walking, swimming, drinking, smoking, towing a car). They are self-absorbed without having any redeeming qualities even among "oldest friends;" they are to a person nasty, yet boring. Literally no one ever says anything. One time the father screamed at the kids. That's about it. Probably the most interesting thing about it was that once the actress playing "Anna" called Tom Hiddleston "Tom" instead of his character's actual name, "Oakley," in a scene. Utterly pointless.If you want to see a movie with Tom Hiddleston that actually has characters in it, see "The Deep Blue Sea." They're jerks too, but it, by contrast, has character, dialogue and plot.

Someone once said, "It's the singer, not the song". Here, it's difficult to know which is responsible for the effect created by this film -- the cast, or the writing (and by extension, directing). Certainly, Ms. Hogg deserves credit for her sure, understated camera-work and pithy screenplay. The film demonstrates, in equal measure, both a sense of forward movement (in terms of plot and tension), and a verisimilitude of action and speech. There is a quasi-documentary feel to the proceedings; we enter and view scenes from odd angles, with the camera in a corner, or down a hall from the intended dialogue; scenes begin and end in medias res. The effect is never, however, mannered or jarring, but is calculated for maximum dispatch in terms of character and plot development.However, the performances themselves are so fine, so delicately thatched and inked as to leave the impression of real people, and not "roles" played by professionals. Chief among them is Ms. Worth's turn as Anna, who is not quite as hapless, or feckless, as some of the other reviewers on this site would have indicated. It is interesting to see those viewers' reactions to her pass at the younger Oakley which characterize it as disgusting, or out-of-touch. In another movie (say an Irvine Welsh adaptation, for instance) a woman like Anna would get at least two fairly raunchy sex scenes. This is not to short-change Ms. Worth's physical attractiveness; in fact, the heat between her character and that of Mr. Hiddleston's is palpable. But Ms. Hogg is not after the same sort of effect as Irvine Welsh; this film is a slow-burner. And Ms. Worth finds her footing surely in the lazy Tuscan atmosphere, conveying thousands of words with just a look. Take, for instance, her semi-squint in reaction to Oakley's prying questions about children. The answer is writ large between the drawn-up lower lids, the slight pucker to the mouth. Further to Ms. Worth's credit is that her background is theatre and opera (she has done some choral roles with major productions) neither of which genre is famous for the slight gesture, or subtlety of reading. Here, though, she is "playing chamber music", and not blasting grand opera to the back of the house. All told, this is probably one of the best films to come across this reviewer's screen in the last twenty years.

Not the most imaginative title for a film. But it does describe what goes on.Hot summer holidays in Tuscan villas. When the Sienna Palio is on. I've known one of them. Lazing about with strangers. Wondering what, or if, you've got anything in common.I wouldn't have wanted to have been holidaying with this lot though. With this well to do poncey lot. Even the pompous prig George is calling Oakley his "supercilious prat of a son" (Oakley, i ask you!) The dope smoking teenagers are spoilt public school types. Whooping and whaling it up. Pinching traffic cones. Wrecking the neighbours car. I wanted to give that Oakley a slap around his conceited curly big head.I didn't feel much sympathy for Anna either. I've known women like her: self-absorbed middle-class 40′s something women who self-pity about not having kids, and are neurotically going through a self-induced mid life crisis about everything (failing relationship, career choice etc) but also about nothing at all really: you're no longer young; you can no longer have it all – flippin get over yourself! That's what i would have wanted to say to this Anna. If I'd been there. But I wasn't. Small mercies!Yes, this film actually makes you feel relieved not to have been there in sun-drenched Tuscany; such summer holidays seem like excessively empty exercises in vapid self-indulgence. Especially given todays impoverished (and imperiled) economic climate. Anyway, Anna tries having a crush on Oakley. She's old enough to be his mother. She's misread all the signs. Or maybe the conceited prat has sort of idly lead her on. But I feel little sympathy for her. In a way, its good he rejects her; wakes her up to herself, how adrift she is in her life. Painful realisation. Gotta grow up here. Get back into Adult. So lets drop that little sh and it in it (he'd wrecked the car and tried to get away with it) Not that she's done it out of adult moral responsibility – more like vengeful spite (at being rejected) Anna's late confessional scene with friend Verena in hotel is overwrought and self-consciously neurotic – but that could have been the over-reacting of the actress – not able to suggest more sympathetic qualities (maybe that's why this was her first film – her acting isn't up to much) Interview extra with Joanna Hogg:"Many of the important events are off screen – its more powerful when you hear something and don't see it; what the audience is imagining is happening is a lot more interesting than what i could show them" Which might be another way to say i don't have the ability to make it imaginatively interesting. A kop out. But I'll give her rationale the benefit of the doubt.Anna is trying to capture unexpressed adolescent yearnings (the hanging out with Oakley and Co) But its all vanity. And all in vain. So grow up! "I tried for not an obvious kind of beauty ala Merchant Ivory heritage Tuscany" Yes, i could see that. Mind you, sometimes the camera-work could have done with being of a better quality: night scenes were chronically under lit; dialogues were indistinct, sometimes inaudible. But Hogg says they had a cheap camera to work with. Explains, but doesn't excuse why you can't hear half of whats being said.Says she was aiming at a truth – true for her – that expresses what she hears and sees is true-to-life of the life and particular milieu around her. I got that. And i think she achieved it. Despite my criticisms i think this film did capture quite authentically something awkward and actual, something painfully real. About how social and self exclusion often feed off and into one another.Watching this privileged lot smugly sloshing back their red bottles of vino I'd have felt – and was feeling – as unrelated as Anna was.

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.