Unmoored  (15) |Close-Up Film Review

Maria (Mirja Turestedt) is a successful tv presenter in Sweden whose life goes into crisis when her domineering husband Magnus (Thomas W. Gabrielsson) is accused of a serious crime.  

They agree to go on holiday together – odd that he is allowed to in view of his situation.  She wants to go to England, he insists they go visit friends in Poland and then go on to Marrakesh.  He gets his way.

Based on a novel by Hakån Nesser, there is a strong feminist attitude in the story telling.  On her tv show Maria exposes an interviewee’s abuse of his wife and when staying with their friends Maria is visibly irritated by the doll like acceptance the husband’s new wife Barbara (Marta Zmuda Trzebiatowska) has for her role as homemaker and sexpot. 

Marian and Magnus then head off on the next stage of their journey, stopping for some reason on a wild Polish beach where Magnus insists on inspecting a semi derelict wartime bunker.  Something happens between them in there which causes Maria to abandon her husband, seize their car with their dog in it and drive down through Europe to England.  We don’t see her go through immigration – just know she’s there when she changes from driving on the right hand side of the road to the left.  But how does she get the dog through British customs without paperwork?  Bit of a mystery that.

Maria rents a house in a remote part of England – lots of lovely Exmoor scenery.  She buries her wedding ring and her mobile phone in the garden, forms a friendship with a local farmer Mark (Kris Hitchen) and works on the book Magnus is supposed to be writing.  But then she gets this uneasy feeling that she is being followed.   Could Magnus have found out where she is?   Or is she just being paranoid?

The background to the situation is revealed intriguingly in flashbacks, which are sometimes not always clear if they are in England or back in Sweden.   One I will reveal however is a scene where Maria meets the young woman who is accusing Magnus of rape.  Anna Próchniak has just this one scene but she is powerfully memorable.

Turestedt, who is on screen for virtually the whole film is extremely good and holds the whole film together.  There are though several holes and inconsistencies in the storytelling with the dog’s lack of pet passport being but one.  The biggest one is the final reveal when Maria is back in Sweden and we find out what really happened in that bunker  A whole new and complicated scenario of completely different and unlikely information is revealed all in a rush in the film’s closing scene, which is likely to leave the audience bewildered and unconvinced.   Which is a pity as, despite its faults, for a lot of its length this is an otherwise strong and well acted human drama cum mystery thriller.