Summer in Tuscany – idyllic, no? Well, maybe not so idyllic if you’re Anna (Kathryn Worth), a fortysomething woman whose marriage is splintering and whose biological clock shows 10 seconds to midnight. Anna’s come to stay at an old schoolfriend’s summer villa, but finds herself increasingly drawn not to the adults in the party but to the youngsters, a boozy, bantering crowd in their late teens, and especially to the rangy, good-looking Oakley (Tom Hiddleston).
But tensions mount and Anna, the outsider, falls foul of unspoken assumptions within the group. Telly director Joanna Hogg’s first feature takes a pleasingly naturalistic and intriguingly oblique approach – conversations ramble, half-heard, things happen just offscreen – and we, like Anna, are often left wondering quite where we stand. If Eric Rohmer were British, this is the kind of film he’d make.
NOVERDICT
