All Critics (15)
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Top Critics (1)
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Fresh (11)
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Rotten (2)
This is a drama that amounts to much more than the sum of its parts and, without doubt, is one of the best, and most original, British films of the year.
If Hogg can render the travails of a bunch of middle-class British holidaymakers a subject of interest, there's reason to hope she has some career in the making.
Scratchy? But why not? Scratchy sounds human. In Unrelated we almost hear the charcoal on the paper as the group portrait takes shape, filled with unknown actors helping to cross-hatch their own characters.
Those of you who enjoy enigmatic dramas which unfold slowly will not be disappointed.
If Eric Rohmer were British, this is the kind of film he'd make.
However, the climactic scene - when we learn what's been bugging the sour-faced Anna all this time - proves a bit of an awkward let-down, under-written and over-acted.
Unrelated is an emotionally and sometimes wince-inducingly acute debut from British director Joanna Hogg that looks and feels and sounds like few other British films.
As if from nowhere, a first-time British film-maker has appeared with a tremendously accomplished, subtle and supremely confident feature, authorially distinctive and positively dripping with technique.
The more relaxed the chemistry, the more taboo and tense the film becomes. It's a marvellous piece of cinema that looks as if it is being crafted before your eyes.
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.
Hogg stages some scenes with a sure sense of composition and dramatic tension but too often the film feels self-conscious and ponderous.
Well acted, superbly written drama with a strong central performance by Kathryn Worth and impressive direction by Joanna Hogg.
Joanna Hogg's feature debut is a subtle drama addressed at the teenager still vacationing in every adult.
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