Nothing Personal (2009)

Nothing Personal: Directed by Urszula Antoniak. With Lotte Verbeek, Stephen Rea, Tom Charlfa, Ann Marie Horan. Alone in her empty flat, from her window Anne observes the people passing by who nervously snatch up the personal belongings and pieces of furniture she has put out on the pavement. Her final gesture of taking a ring off her finger signals she is leaving her previous life in Holland behind. She goes to Ireland, where she chooses to lead a solitary, wandering existence, striding through the austere landscapes of Connemara. During her travels, she discovers a house that is home to a hermit, Martin.

“Lotte Verbeek and Stephen Rea, two highly accomplished actors, take on this thoughtful two- hander from Polish-Dutch débutant Urszula Antoniak about loneliness and the difficulty of human connection.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eVerbeek plays an unnamed Dutch woman who finds herself in Ireland after the end of her marriage and, having opted for an itinerant life free from lifeu0026#39;s trappings, ends up working on the isolated estate of recent widower Martin (Rea). They strike up an agreement: she will work for food on condition that neither exchanges any personal information about the other. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe deal works for a while, but inevitably resistances crumble and the pair form a strong and, for the audience, steadily intriguing bond. Their personal as well as cultural differences clash and then mesh, leading to a co-dependency allegorical to most u0026#39;normalu0026#39; relationships. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAntoniak clearly has a good eye, and her performers give their all, but as the filmu0026#39;s central premise – a Dutch girl wandering into the Galway countryside – is never explained (beyond the financial needs of a Dutch-Irish co-production), the result is perplexing rather than engaging. While Antoniaku0026#39;s restraint is admirable, from a dramaturgical perspective we are left to scratch our heads while indulging in shots of beautiful countryside. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe result is impressive but curiously forgettable, and feels like the idea for a short stretched out into a feature-length film (albeit one that cleaned up at the Locarno Film Festival). We are certainly pulled into the head of the main character, but as her puzzlement and anomie for the world increases so does ours for the film, so any chance of redemption (or explanation) is not just missing, itu0026#39;s redundant. u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eAntoniak is one to watch, but whether one could say the same for the film is not so much a question of quality but one of taste.”