The Irish countryside, silence, solitude... The synopsis sounds promising, but the execution just doesn't feel authentic. This movie tries to do something, be something, that it cannot deliver. I don't buy it, I don't believe it. It's not necessary to know a lot about a character's background to feel for the character, to get interested in a character. The opposite is often true. But there needs to be something that you can work with, can relate to. Something that grips you, at the very least the character needs to make you care. I just found the girl annoying. Instead of being intrigued by her, I grew very quickly very tired with her act, which just seemed so immature. She just acted like a rebellious, capricious adolescent. That she may be of course, but that makes it hard (impossible really) to explore the deeper feelings the movie wants to explore through her character. And I couldn't detect much depth in 'the philosopher' as well. The 'pact' (don't ask, don't tell) they make is just an unimaginative cliché, that could work and has worked in some movies, but here it just seems like a cheap gimmick to try and make the characters seem more mysterious and interesting and their interactions more intriguing. I can see what the director was going for, but it just didn't work for me. And exploring themes like loneliness and love in a respectful, authentic, believable, gripping way, is not easy for sure. The story, characters, acting, setting, dialogues, music, everything must fall into place. The countryside was actually fairly well chosen, but the rest of the 'ingredients' just didn't cut it. I didn't get sucked in by the movie, just kept bumping into awkward little bumps in the story, character development and the acting was mediocre. There're some Asian (especially Japanese and Korean) directors, who really understand the art of portraying loneliness and love, and for whom's interested I would suggest looking into the work of Korean director Kim Ki-Duk or for example watch 'Toni Takitani' (after a story by Haruki Murakami). The cover scene from Nothing Personal, naked girl hugging the dead loved one wrapped in a sheet, is even 'borrowed' from an Asian movie (I cannot quite remember the name though). Nothing Personal just didn't feel right, it just felt pretentious. Nothing personal though.
Review of Nothing Personal
