Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Caroline Ingvarsson
Starring: Mirja Turestedt, Thomas W. Gabrielsson, Kris Hitchen, Sven Ahlström, Anna Próchniak
Good storytelling, especially of the cinematic variety, has the
ability to make us sympathise with and even root for characters that
have committed heinous acts. In Hitchcock's Rope we
witness two young men murder their friend and hide his body in a trunk
which they then make the centerpiece of a party. We should be
screaming at the other characters to open the damning chest but
instead we dig our nails in with apprehension every time someone moves
near the trunk. Why do we do this? Is it a form of Stockholm Syndrome,
that if we spend enough time with a protagonist we'll take their side?
Or perhaps it's because we all secretly harbour a fear that some day
we might commit a terrible act ourselves.
What if that terrible act is understandable, if not entirely
justified? That's the question we find ourselves asking throughout
director Caroline Ingvarsson's Unmoored, adapted from Hakan Nesser's novel 'The Living and the Dead
in Winsford' by screenwriter Michèle Marshall.
The terrible act is committed by Maria (Mirja Turestedt), a
Swedish TV presenter known for her confrontational onscreen manner.
Her public persona is that of a committed feminist. During one of her
shows she exposes a husband as a domestic abuser. When she meets a
colleague's new younger wife she questions why the woman is happy to
be a stay at home wife. In her private life it's a different story.
She's under the thumb of her boorish husband Magnus (Thomas W. Gabrielsson), whom she is currently standing by amid an accusation of sexual
assault.
When Maria suggests the couple leave Sweden until the scandal dies
down, Magnus agrees, but he dismisses her desire to travel to England.
Instead, Magnus wants to go to Morocco, with a stop in Poland to visit
a friend along the way. While in Poland the couple have an argument,
which clearly is just the latest of many. When Magnus storms off down
a beach, Maria has a rush of blood to the head and drives away, taking
Magnus's dog Caspar with her.
Maria ends up in England, but her paranoia suggests she didn't merely
leave her husband stranded. We see her about to google for news of an
incident at the Polish beach, but something stops her from hitting the
Enter key and revealing the results. At night she thinks she hears
noises outside the remote cottage she's rented. While driving she is
followed by a white car which she sees several times around the
village.
The film teases out the truth of what happened between Maria and
Magnus on the beach in flashbacks that unveil Maria's actions one
piece at a time. We also see a past confrontation between Maria and
the young woman who accused her husband of rape. It's clear that Maria
believed the victim but stood by Magnus regardless.
Maria begins a brief affair with a sensitive local man (Kris Hitchen), a subplot that thankfully just about avoids straying into treacly
Nicholas Sparks territory, but for most of the movie Maria is alone
with her thoughts, with her paranoia, with her guilt. Turestedt, who
looks awfully like the Danish actress Sidse Babett Knudsen, is very
good at conveying the forces eating away at her character, forces
which we fear will ultimately consume her.
But why do we fear for Maria, especially when we learn the full
details of her actions? Well I guess it's because we all know of
examples of men like Magnus who use their power to avoid any
consequences for their misdeeds. But many of us have also experienced
relationships and friendships that soured to a point where we just
needed to walk away from the other party. Too often that's not an
option, and too many people remain in miserable couplings because they
can't find a way out. We may not condone Maria's particular act, but
many viewers will applaud her courage in finally taking some sort of
action.
Some aspects of the film don't quite hold up to interrogation, and as
a thriller it may have worked better if set in a pre-internet era. In
reality, Maria would be easily tracked by the digital trail she leaves
by holding onto her phone and that of her husband, and by the IP
address from which she sends emails to her husband's worried
publisher. Her fake story of continuing on to Morocco with Magnus
would easily be disproven by the police by simply checking with the
airline. Such details take us out of the film at key points, which is
a shame as Unmoored is an otherwise tense and paranoid
thriller with a protagonist we can sympathise with if not entirely
condone.
