This may be the first film noir to revolve around a lonely granny. True, the granny is played by Charlotte Rampling — svelte and beguiling as ever. But that doesn’t diffuse the strangeness of Barnaby Southcombe’s debut thriller.
It starts like your average over-ambitious British hybrid. Tower blocks. Boys in hooded tops. Middle-class malcontents. A small part for Eddie Marsan. All the elements are in place. The plot swerves when classy, divorced dame Anna (Rampling) bumps into a detective almost as sadly handsome as her (Gabriel Byrne). The glance he throws her way creates a tingle. They meet again at a singles night, then for a date. The tingles increase.
Maybe it’s Richard Hawley’s left-field, retro crooning, or the dialogue, which immediately hones in on domestic crimes and disappointments. Or the bleak, painterly visuals ... Dislocation, dislocation. It’s London life, but not as we know it.
Hayley Atwell plays Anna’s single-mum daughter and adds an extra layer of solidity to Anna’s flaky world. The latter’s vast, elegant flat, the half-smile which she uses to fend off a hostile world, and her privilege and vulnerability hit us with equal force.
We’re used to seeing Rampling at the centre of grown-up films but usually they come with subtitles. Watching tangled events unfold in I, Anna, you find yourself pondering another mystery — what made an English director choose the 66-year-old actress as his muse? The answer, I’m afraid, is prosaic.
Young Nick Cassavetes stuck his mum in front of a camera for Unhook the Stars. Audiences don’t always warm to this kind of scenario, being understandably unwilling to get involved in a family affair. Try not to let it put you off. I, Anna’s ending is not as clever as it should have been but the film’s atmosphere clings like fog.
