I,
Anna
I,
bored
A
tricksy, convoluted neo-noir thriller that’s nowhere near as tricksy or
convoluted as it thinks it is, I, Anna is a stylish, good-looking exercise in
tedium and nepotism set in trendy, modern, cosmopolitan London. Or at least the Barbican where most of it
seems to have been shot.
The
feature film debut of TV director Barnaby Southcombe, I, Anna sees Barnaby cast his mother,
Charlotte Rampling, as lonely, older, divorcee Anna, tentatively dipping her toe
back into the dating scene. After
an uncomfortable night’s speed dating, Anna is heading home when she encounters
world-weary police detective Bernie (Gabriel Byrne), quite literally bumping
into him as he arrives at the high-rise she’s leaving, and the two share an
instant connection.
Bernie’s
investigating the bloody murder of well-off, charming bachelor George Stone (Ralph
Brown) who
attended the same dating event as Anna.
The chief suspects are Stone’s son Stevie (Max Deacon) and his friend; petty crooks
in debt to some local gangsters.
But Bernie can’t get Anna out of his mind, his attraction to her verging
on stalking when he follows her to a singles night where the two bond over
their failed marriages and lonely lives.
Anna has some dark secrets, secrets locked away in the back of her mind,
secrets that Stone’s death have brought bubbling to the surface, forcing Anna
to confront her tragic past.
With
it’s blandly moody Richard Hawley soundtrack, its predictable, obvious plot and
its leaden pace I, Anna feels like an escaped TV movie. Glossy and expensive looking, with a nice, atmospheric sense
of place and time, it’s a shame the film squanders a fantastic, eclectic cast (Gabriel
Byrne, Eddie Marsan, Hayley Atwell, Jodhi May, Honor Blackman) on such a pedestrian tale
and, long before Anna’s flashbacks start unravelling her past, you’ll have
divined the enigma at the heart of I, Anna, Southcombe favouring the film’s surface
sheen at the expense of his sloppy storytelling.
While
the cast are mostly excellent and Byrne is on particularly fine, mournful form
as the rumpled Bernie, perhaps the film’s greatest deficiency is the casting of
Rampling as a middle-aged singleton who works in the bedding department of a
department store. Elegant and
poised, it may be ageist to say it but, at 66, she feels (and looks) at least
16 years too old for the role and she’s just too damn glam to convince as
someone who sells mattresses! It’s
lovely (and, during the film’s rape scene, a little uncomfortable) that Southcombe
loves his mummy enough to build his film around her but she’s simply
miscast. There’s little sense of
much-needed chemistry with Byrne and, with her steely reserve and coolness,
it’s difficult to feel much sympathy for Rampling even as Anna’s sanity
disintegrates and flashbacks of her repressed memories reveal the reasons for
Anna’s fracturing personality.
Downbeat,
slick and initially intriguing before buckling under the weight of its own
ridiculousness, I, Anna makes dating in your twilight years look like just
about as good an idea as that time in Dallas, 1963, when Bad Back Jack turned
to the future Mrs Onassis and said: “Why don’t we leave the top down today hun?”
David Watson
Directed by:
Written by:
Produced by:
Starring:
Charlotte Rampling, Gabriel Byrne,
Hayley Atwell,
Eddie Marsan,
Jodhi May, Ralph Brown
and Honor Blackman
Genres:
Drama, Thriller
Language:
English
Runtime:
1 hour 31
minutes
Certificate:
15
Rating:
2/5
UK
Release Date:
Friday
7th December
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