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Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

I'll start right off by saying this movie won't be for everyone. It's a very slow movie, the kind where you're watching people NOT say things for hours and where there's minimal plot. But it's also the type of movie where if you connect with the characters you REALLY connect with them and for me it was a pleasure to spend time with these characters. The main character of Hogg's Unrelated is Anna a woman who is in the early stages of middle age. Anna and her husband have been invited by her oldest friend Verena to join Verena's family and extended family (made up of three adults and four teenagers) in a villa in the Italian countryside where they spend their summers. Only Anna shows up without her partner and soon enough, rather than spend time with the "olds" Anna is adopted into the friend group of the "youngs", the teens that are young enough to be her children. Drinking and getting high irresponsibly she forms a light flirtation with Oakley, the ring leader of the pack who, despite his youth, has an air of authority and control which stands out in contrast to the somewhat shy and nervous Anna. For those willing to give Unrelated a chance I will say that is one of the finest meditations on adulthood, particularly adult womanhood, I've ever seen. If the first half of the film is Anna drifting about with the youngs, innocently capturing a youth she never quite had, the second half is her painful growing up.

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.

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.

Saw this last night at the Glasgow Film Festival with the director and producer present. Joanna Hogg is really an exciting new talent in British cinema. Her influences would appear to be Bergman, Antonioni, Ozu and other classic art-house masters rather than the wan rom-coms and thrillers that tend to clutter up British cinema. The story of a middle-aged woman who joins her friends on holiday in Italy is intriguingly enigmatic but retains an air of mystery and unease as we are allowed to eavesdrop on conversations, hint at relationships and speculate on what seems to be a deeply unhappy existence. The whole film was scripted but the dialogue retains the feel of spontaneity and moments snatched from real life. A challenging film but well worth checking out. Hope it finds a British distributor.