A huge sigh releases from deep within Maria (Mirja Turestedt) as she is greeted by a mob of photographers and journalists at her door asking “Are the allegations true Maria?!” Her husband, Magnus, has been accused of raping a young girl he met at a bar. Of course, he denies it, and for whatever reason she has decided to stick by him, but resentment and buried emotion pervade her every pore. After a murky incident with Magnus, Maria flees to Exmoor and is left to ruminate on her life past, present and future.
Director Caroline Ingvarsson’s atmospheric, low-key Swedish British-Polish character study kicks things off strong, slowly drip-feeding us the details surrounding the incident through Magnus’s behaviour towards Maria and other women. The film is best when it focuses on the more intimate psychological elements of the narrative and the dangerous, destructive nuance of sexual assault and its ripple effects. Yet screenwriters Michelle Marshall and Håkan Nesser sadly rely on clunky plot devices instead of opting for a subtler investigation between Maria’s physical body and her connection to the evocatively dour windswept moors. There’s heavy exposition despite both Ingvarsson and cinematographer Michal Dymek managing to capture the bleak yet serene nature of the landscape.
Get more Little White Lies
However, Turestedt is quietly superb in the lead and she carries the film’s themes on her shoulders with Jack-in-the-box tension, her veneer as a successful Swedish television presenter mimicking the repression she’s facing in her life. In one scene, she bravely stands up to a presumed abusive man on her talk show before admitting to a colleague, “I couldn’t help myself.” It’s this kind of subtle insight that’s naggingly sparse in Unmoored – a film that promises a brooding trip to the moorlands, but instead feels like an oppressive city break.
