I, Anna review

A slice of modern London noir is served up in writer/director Barnaby Southcombe’s debut.

His real-life mum, Charlotte Rampling, stars as a lonely, middle-aged divorcee who becomes chief suspect in a murder investigation led by a jaded police inspector (Gabriel Byrne).

The flashback-laden story lacks plausibility and relies on familiar generic devices (exhibit A: the amnesiac femme fatale).

Yet the acting’s shrewdly understated and the mood evocatively downbeat, thanks to the muted palette, the brutalist Barbican architecture and Richard Hawley’s melancholic songs.