Unrelated

Synopsis

Anna (Worth) arrives in Italy to stay with her old schoolfriend Verena (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 fight. The group is split into an unspoken line between the "olds": Verena, her new husband Charlie (Hadley) and Verena's cousin George (Rintoul); and the "youngs": Verena's two teenage children Jack (Lloyd-Hughes) and Badge (Emma Hiddleston), Charlie's son Archie (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 drug and drink-fuelled car accident in a borrowed car.

The simmering sexual tension and flirtation between Anna 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 fight with his father. Totally rejected by the teenage group as a result, Anna leaves the villa and checks into 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, is reconciled with the teenagers, 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.

Cast

Several people who lived and worked on the estate where filming took place also appeared in the film and are credited as themselves.

Production

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.

Reception

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. Critics remarked on its 'un-British' style and atmosphere, drawing comparisons to Ozu, Rohmer and Chabrol. 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". 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 87% rating score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Awards