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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 01/03/2013 : 14:48:00
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Well, I guess first-time screenwriter and seasoned telly director Barnaby Southcombe might have come from a family even more immersed in show biz than his, but it's hard to imagine.
His mum's Charlotte Rampling, the eponymous focus of this film, dad Bryan was an actor, and step-dad is muso Jean-Michel Jarre.
Now I ain't saying it was his pedigree that got him the gig, but I'm willing to bet that Rampling didn't exactly hurt the financing and green light.
And, to be fair, Southcombe does quite a competent job of pointing the camera at the material which he adapted from Elsa Lewin's psychological thriller. It's that adaptation which is the problem.
Reputedly an American psychologist, this was Lewin's first novel, published in the mid-1980s. It was set in NYC, pre-social networking, and featured a fifty-ish protagonist, and a muddle of guilt, repression, violence, and some URST [unresolved sexual tension] to tick off the boxes of narrative predictability.
Southcombe transports the tale to London, ages the woman up some 10-15 years to render his mum credible, fails to integrate some essential technology, and whoop, whoop, we're away.
Except we're not. Not really. It all feels a bit tempest-in-a-teacup. I don't just mean that the film brings nothing new to a familiar story frequently tackled by telly cop episodes, but that even with Southcombe's often stylish shooting style, we don't really care about the people.
I'm not going to explain this next reference, because I don't want to spoil the film if you happen to see it. But if you've seen either play or film of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? you'll recognize a fine example of how to deliver interest from people who, let's say, are not on their best behaviour.
None of I, Anna's failure to sufficiently draw you in is down to the acting. As you might expect from such a well-connected chap, Southcombe's cast features some mighty clever performances not only from his dependable mum, but well-matched by co-star Gabriel Byrne as a detective off his stride. These two are especially well supported by the very versatile Eddie Marsan, who at least gets some character-revealing screen time.
Southcombe doesn't seen able to assimilate the smaller parts into his story. Many scenes feel tacked on. Most of all, the whole has a third-party air about it. Almost nothing seems organic.
Now, try as I might to justify this by some misguided but deliberate attempt to mirror Anna's mind, it just doesn't work. The thriller stuff gets lost and the character stuff doesn't have the time to develop as it might in the context of a novel.
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I, Anna
