Wordiezett So much average

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Taraparain Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

ferdinand1932 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.

Raghu Menon 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.

thecatcanwait 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.

ButterflyMindToo If you wanted a villa holiday in Tuscany this summer and didn't have time, go to this film and by the end you will feel you have spent a fortnight there. Joanna Hogg has created an upper-middle class version of a Mike Leigh film at his slowest. It's beautifully done, and the fortnight is mostly enjoyable, unless you squirm at the sight of drunken Brits abroad or the sound of the upper-middle classes (I developed a thick skin for both of these a long time ago, myself). The characterisation is subtle, verging on invisible. There's very little intellectual content or sparkling conversation, surely unrealistic in a film about the chattering classes? Perhaps it's the prodigious amount of alcohol that's consumed. All this keeps the focus on Anna, on holiday from her unhappy situation at home, and the cheerfully pie-eyed teenagers that she hangs out with.The movie was very thin on plot, yet there did seem to be inconsistencies on the departure date for some of the party. I doubt I'll watch it again to check this though; once is nice, but enough.