| Unrelated | |
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Film poster for Unrelated |
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| Directed by | Joanna Hogg |
| Produced by | Barbara Stone |
| Written by | Joanna Hogg |
| Starring | Kathryn Worth Tom Hiddleston Mary Roscoe David Rintoul Henry Lloyd-Hughes Harry Kershaw Michael Hadley Emma Hiddleston |
| Cinematography | Oliver Curtis |
| Editing by | Helle Le Fevre |
| Distributed by | New Wave Films |
| Release date(s) | 19th September 2008 (UK) |
| Running time | 110 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Unrelated is a 2008 British film written and directed by Joanna Hogg about a fortysomething woman who goes on holiday with a friend and her teenage family to Italy. It was shot on location in Tuscany, Italy near the city of Siena.
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Anna (Kathryn Worth) arrives in Italy to stay with her old schoolfriend Verena (Mary Roscoe) and her family in their rented villa in Tuscany. She was meant to be accompanied by her partner, Alex, but she tells Verena that he had to stay in London to work at the last minute. Over the course of the film it become apparent that Anna took the holiday to get some time away from Alex following a row. The group is split along a clear but unspoken line between the 'olds' -Verena, her new husband Charlie (Michael Hadley) and Verena's cousin George (David Rintoul), and the 'young' -Verena's two teenage children Jack (Henry Lloyd-Hughes) and Badge (Emma Hiddleston), Charlie's son Archie (Harry Kershaw), and George's son Oakley (Tom Hiddleston). Trying to escape her relationship worries with Alex, Anna finds herself spending increasingly more time with the teenagers, upsetting Verena. She joins in with their mild hedonism, even promising not to tell their parents about their dope smoking and a drugs and drink-fuelled car accident in a borrowed car.
The simmering sexual tension and flirtation between her and Oakley, the teenagers ringleader, comes to a head when she invites him in to spend the night but he turns her down. Anna eventually tells Verena about the car accident, getting the teenagers into serious trouble and causing Oakley to have an appalling row with his father. Totally rejected by the teenage group as a result, Anna leaves the villa and checks in to a local hotel. Verena seeks her out, and the two reconcile after Anna reveals she has discovered that she can't have children. She returns to the villa with Verena, and stays on for a few days after the rest of the party have left. In the final scene we see Anna in a taxi to the airport on the phone to Alex, seemingly looking forward to seeing him again.
The film was shot on location in Italy on a Sony Z1 camera. The cast lived on location in the house that the characters rent on the San Fabiano Estate, even sleeping in the bedrooms that were used as their characters' bedrooms in the film.
Unrelated premiered at the London Film Festival in 2007, where it won the FIPRESCI International Critics Prize. On its release in September 2008 it was hailed as one of the most original British films of the year[1]. Critics remarked on its 'un-British' style and atmosphere, drawing comparisons to Ozu, Rohmer and Chabrol.[2][3]. Writing in The Sunday Times, Bryan Appleyard called it 'radical' for portraying a group of British middle class characters "simply as another tribe, one with its own customs, failings, virtues and, above all, human, all too human, anguish...In terms both of style and content, this is a radical and brilliant film that will, if there is any justice, come to be seen as a turning point for British cinema"[4]. In their December 2009 list of the 'Top 100 Films of The Decade', the film critics of The Guardian newspaper put Unrelated at no. 21, the highest British film in the list. It currently holds an 85% rating score on Rotten Tomatoes [5].