Nothing Personal (2010)

You won't be disappointed!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

A woman (Lotte Verbeek) has suffered some sort of loss. She's playing with her ring. Strangers are grabbing her belongings left outside her apartment. She goes hitching into the Irish countryside. She stops at a farm where Martin (Stephen Rea) offers food for work. They collect seaweed from the coast to fertilize the land. She refuses to give him any personal information including her name. They find solace in each other's damaged lives.These two damaged characters are played by compelling big-time actors. It's a quiet movie filmed by first-time Polish-Dutch director Urszula Antoniak. It's all about the quiet which sometimes generates powerful moments. Mostly, it's just quiet. It's an interesting debut.

Based on the Locarno credentials of this movie (garnering six awards at that event, not counting many others) I decided to take a dive into some of my expatriate's work abroad. A very simple tale about Anne (Lotte Verbaek), who cuts away from everything connected to her previous life in Holland (most likely due to the death of her husband, but we can only speculate the real reason) and backpacks to Ireland. There she comes across an elderly fisherman, Martin, (the brilliant Stephen Rea), who lives in solitude in a desolate location close to the sea. On their encounter Anne is extremely rash, even rude, being in a state devoid of any warmth or friendliness. However they soon agree to an uneasy truce: Anne will work for food, but as long as no personal matters are touched.Set in untiringly beautiful locations of the Irish countryside the movie always manages to remain an eye-catcher (especially a fascinating peninsular, which is the main location of the movie), which helps keep the focus on the story itself, despite its very slowly unwinding rudimentary plot. Emotionwise I wasn't however fully convinced by Lotte Verbaek and additionally I did feel that several scenes/dialogues seemed not to fit the overall tone and logic of the movie. Nonetheless the whole story rings with a somber truth, as emotions and feelings catch the characters unawares, which leads to an absolutely heart-wrenching finale (the scene from the poster). Very simply crafted and set in the most basic human feelings it really has an unbelievable capacity to capture the attention and linger in memory.Despite it's flaws it remains a stunning, if very reserved, watch, which shows the immense potential of Polish-born Urszula Antoniak.

The Irish countryside, silence, solitude... The synopsis sounds promising, but the execution just doesn't feel authentic. This movie tries to do something, be something, that it cannot deliver. I don't buy it, I don't believe it. It's not necessary to know a lot about a character's background to feel for the character, to get interested in a character. The opposite is often true. But there needs to be something that you can work with, can relate to. Something that grips you, at the very least the character needs to make you care. I just found the girl annoying. Instead of being intrigued by her, I grew very quickly very tired with her act, which just seemed so immature. She just acted like a rebellious, capricious adolescent. That she may be of course, but that makes it hard (impossible really) to explore the deeper feelings the movie wants to explore through her character. And I couldn't detect much depth in 'the philosopher' as well. The 'pact' (don't ask, don't tell) they make is just an unimaginative cliché, that could work and has worked in some movies, but here it just seems like a cheap gimmick to try and make the characters seem more mysterious and interesting and their interactions more intriguing. I can see what the director was going for, but it just didn't work for me. And exploring themes like loneliness and love in a respectful, authentic, believable, gripping way, is not easy for sure. The story, characters, acting, setting, dialogues, music, everything must fall into place. The countryside was actually fairly well chosen, but the rest of the 'ingredients' just didn't cut it. I didn't get sucked in by the movie, just kept bumping into awkward little bumps in the story, character development and the acting was mediocre. There're some Asian (especially Japanese and Korean) directors, who really understand the art of portraying loneliness and love, and for whom's interested I would suggest looking into the work of Korean director Kim Ki-Duk or for example watch 'Toni Takitani' (after a story by Haruki Murakami). The cover scene from Nothing Personal, naked girl hugging the dead loved one wrapped in a sheet, is even 'borrowed' from an Asian movie (I cannot quite remember the name though). Nothing Personal just didn't feel right, it just felt pretentious. Nothing personal though.

I watched this alone, in a foreign cinema far from home and found it highly resonant. It is a love story, and one of some sort of healing of the senses.There are some exquisitely observed scenes, the sensuousness of her running the seaweed through her hands (several times) and their connectedness with nature form a counterpoint to their individual alienation and personal sorrow, their unrevealed grief. That and the scene in which she demonstrates an extraordinary culinary talent reveal a refinement that he shows us from the outset with his solitary decorum.The gradual acceptance of their feelings for one another is well constructed although like at least one other commentator I felt the use of some fractured chronology was ambiguous and unsatisfactorily edited.There is the eventual, inevitable tragedy, punctuated with some (mostly wry) comedy along the way but some sense of uncertainty at the end. Whatever else it may be, it features two very moving performances that are deserving of any awards the film receives.