Nothing Personal, by Urszula Antoniak (Netherlands / Ireland, 2009)

 

This film tells us a story of leaving one’s past behind. The main character, a young Dutch woman named Anne, leaves the Netherlands after the end of a relationship, and goes to Ireland. We never find out what exactly happened to make her give away almost all of her belongings and her apartment in Amsterdam – the film isn’t concerned with anyone’s history. Everything she needs for camping she carries in her backpack. Aimlessly she wanders and hitch-hikes around Ireland. She only looks for people to ask them for a ride; these encounters don’t always turn out well.
Finally, she discovers a tiny cottage on a peninsula. The owner of the house, Martin, an older man who lives there by himself, lets her work in the garden for food. They make a deal: no personal questions are to be asked, no stories told.
Slowly they get used to each other, and although they don’t know each others’ names or background, they begin to have some kind of platonic relationship. Anne, always weary and unpolite, starts to soften up, and notices that she misses him when he leaves to buy groceries in some far away place. He lets her have on of the rooms in the house, and they work in the garden and on the beach, harvesting seaweed and turf. I won’t spoil the film for you, in case you want to watch it – and you definitely should! –, so I won’t tell you the ending.

I like that this is a very slow movie, in the way that the director chooses long wide-angled shots of the rugged Irish landscape and lets us take in the scenery, without too many cuts. When she uses a close-up shot, for instance of Anne’s hands, working in the garden with the seaweed, she lets the camera remain there for a while, allowing us to imagine touching the seaweed ourselves, being there in that very moment. Often an unsteady hand-camera is used, especially when Anne feels shaken up and the camera focuses on her facial expression while she is moving. Then the shaky camera enhances the feeling of unrest.

I admire the director’s use of lighting in Martin’s house. It reminds me very much of the paintings of Jan Vermeer (Dutch, 1632-1675), who is best known for his domestic scenes with serene cream-white light falling onto the people and objects. This kind of light is typical for the Netherlands, and many painters have used it in their work. I think, the large amounts of water (the Netherlands have a lot of standing and flowing water, think of the “Grachten” in Amsterdam) reflect the sunlight breaking through the often cloudy sky, and so this kind of light comes to be.
You might know this painting of Vermeer’s; it’s called The Milkmaid (click here!).

Antoniak captures the Irish light in a very similar way, and shows us the domestic scenes in the cottage for instance in time-lapse shots. She even uses similar milk jugs and bowls as Vermeer’s characters, as you can see in the screenshots. A big part of the movie plays in the kitchen of Martin's cottage, which has a beautiful window that lets the light flow onto the characters faces.
It often has a blue-ish tint to it which gives the scene a feeling of time and place, as if it was shot at dusk, during winter or on a rainy day. The changing of light tells us that the daytime is changing.
It makes the images look soft and enhances the intimate pictures we see, and the story we experience. I don't think Antoniak even uses artificial light in this movie.
However, this is just one fine element of the movie. As you watch, you will notice the authentic main characters (I don’t want to call them Actors, because they don’t seem like they are acting), the subtle use of sound – Antoniak mostly uses the natural sounds of the elements, but a few opera pieces like Die Fledermaus are also part of the story, and a very unobtrusive soundtrack accompanies some of the scenes. There is very little dialogue.
I have seen this movie many times, and I’m sure I will watch it again. There are so many subtle properties to this movie, some of which you might not notice the first time. You might feel the urge to go to Ireland right away after to see this movie. I know I did, and I went.