Unrelated

Unrelated (2007)
Directed by Joanna Hog

Unrelated is a movie I happened to watch yesterday and cant help but write about it.My interest in the movie is due to the issue it highlights through the protagonist Anna (katherine Worth). From the very beginning of the movie, we find Anna, somewhat distruaght, dragging her luggage across the dusty roads. When she arrives quite late in the night to a Tuscan villa without her husband Alex, to spend a vacation with her old friend Verena and her family,her discomfort is still not over.
Her demeanour, hesitance completely makes us feel that she feels completely out of place, however is almost hell bent to make the most out of this vacation. Her converstaions, with her husband up on the hills where she could locate network, shows cracks in her marital life. However Anna soon finds herself drawn towards the younger members of the family-Verena's children and Oakley- son of Verena's family friend, who are also holidaying with them.
This is where the movie starts getting interesting. An undercurrent of sexual tension starts building uo between Oakley's irreverence and Anna's silent pleas. Amidst the warm and sunny Italian countryside, beneath the hazy skies, Anna increasingly wants to spend more time with the boozing, boisterous, grass-smoking teenagers. And it seems 40 something Anna eagerly looks forward to Oakley's easy charm and smug confidence for fresh holiday air she is yeraning for. However Anna's behaviors are not unnoticed. At 40 and also being an old friend, she is supposed to behave in a particular protocol and that is definitely not getting into the children's car, drives and expeditions with them, boozing and dancing away. Verena soon suspects something wrong. This is where Joanna scores highly. All such pangs of suspect, tensions, doubts are shown in silent facial expressions. However it seems Anna is desperate to find meaning for the life and that lies in her acceptance by the teen-age group. A car accident, which enrages Oakley's father, so much as to shout at his on, somehow threatens to push away the possibility. A frantic Anna finds herself belonging to nowhere. One brilliant shot signifying that is a walk by all for a lunch at a local friend's place. We find all the characters moving across in groups, Anna being the only single, alone trudging behind.
Almost in the last 15 minutes of the movie, we get to understand Anna better. In fact the last 15 minutes come as a shock to us.
Anna has just entered her menopause-a truth she finds difficult and almost impossible to reconcile with. She is childless and thus almost loses herself to the grief of losing her womanhood. Anna's angush becomes clear. Plea of acceptance into the teenagers' group was a sublimation Anna was looking for to denounce her biological truth. Her sexual underpangs are still not over and she cannot accept her meopause. It seems her body has betrayed her and she tries to gain back her existence through the subdued yet cleverly timed advances by Oakley. Hence she never protests Oakley's undue intrusion and curiosity in her sexual life. At one point, her self-pampering by buying designer lingerie for herself, or coming out naked from teh swimming pool all hint at the insinuating sexual attraction she suffers towards Oakley. Her melancholy is due to her self-awareness of the futility of the whole game.
Menopause is indeed the most difficult time for a woman. It becomes all the more difficult, due to social expectations from the women. It is expected that the journey from one phase to another, would be smooth enough. The sexual desires would immediately be replaced by more matured revelations regarding life. Anna however is still not ready. The world of adults is meaningless, dull and hopeless for her. We are seeing the movie through her. Hence an adult congreggation discussing over the pride of a family possession-a seater used once by Mussolini occurs to us as shallow, pompous and menaingless as it is to Anna. In the end, it seems Anna transcends the distance from one phase to another. Thus we find, the always eager to please Anna, who never expressed disgust at the stubborn insensitivity of the roudy teen-agers throughout the night, gathers herself up asking them to lower the volume of their conversation. The movie ends with Anna finally reconciling with her husband on her way back to London, now much poised and comfortable with herself.
Hog has handled the movie in an excellent manner and never for one moment it seems like a story of middle-age hang-ups. rather it becomes an intriguing story of a damaged woman caught in the most troubled quagmires of her life.

A must watch, if you still have not wtached the movie.