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.

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.

This was a really interesting first film from writer and director Joanna Hogg. Anna, played superbly here by Kathryn Worth in her first film role, arrives to join her old school friend Verena (Mary Roscoe) who is on holiday in a villa in Tuscany with her family and another family in what is clearly an annual arrangement. Anna was supposed to bring her partner Alex with her, but cited his pressure of work as the reason for her arriving alone. In fact, it quickly becomes apparent that Alex and Anna's relationship is in a rocky place, and Anna is in Italy to enjoy a bit of space.The holiday party divided into the old and the young. Anna, whose place should have been with her school friend and 'the olds', gravitated to the more whizzy youngsters with their loud drinking games, skinny dipping, dope smoking and general hell-raising in a battered Fiat, trustingly lent by neighbouring friends. Verena's son Oakley (Tom Hiddleston) began to show an interest in Anna, but he eventually rejected her signals, leaving her struggling to bond with any group.This was a wonderful film about a woman in her mid-life. It was also a telling study of an outsider being pitched into a different world. Verena and her family were well-to-do middle class, but were not an endearing bunch. The older people were insensitive and unfriendly to Anna, who was in need of someone to talk to; the youngsters, let loose from public school, were brash and spoilt. Anyone who has been ignored in a social situation - and there was a wonderful lunch scene here, featuring Mussolini's sofa - will recognise exactly where Joanne Hogg is coming from, and it makes rather uncomfortable viewing for its target audience. It takes Anna's flight to a grim local hotel to finally galvanise Verena into having the conversation she should have had much earlier, in a highly charged scene.But it was the way that this was filmed which made this something out of the ordinary. There were lovely set pieces in the Tuscan countryside, and in Sienna, but the weather was not always sunny, and often there was a wind blowing. Hogg was bold in her approach: at several points, the camera held steady on Anna, even when conversation and action was going on out of shot, and there were long slow scenes. A car crash did not show what happened, but only the vehicle being pulled out of a field by a tow truck, with the (unharmed but shaken) occupants standing about, as one does. A key scene was an almighty row between Oakley and his father George (David Rintoul) which took place inside the villa: we had to join the families sitting about outside, and like them, we were forced to listen to the dangerous raging coming from inside. And we all had to wait to see who came out of the house first, and in what state.The slow pace and art-house style of film will probably annoy and delight audiences in equal measure. I loved it and am very keen to see what Joanna Hogg does next.