‘Unmoored’: London Review

Dir: Caroline Invargsson. UK/Poland/Sweden. 2023. 93mins

A split-second decision has far-reaching consequences in this slow-burn Nordic noir debut from Caroline Ingvarsson which plays out against the arresting backdrops of Sweden and South West England. Mirja Turestedt is convincing as a successful TV host who finds her life unravelling after she finally confronts her boorish husband’s behaviour and, even if some of the peripheral characters are thinly drawn in comparison to its protagonist, the film’s rich atmosphere is to be admired. 

The film’s rich atmosphere is to be admired

Following shorts including Hundvakten (2014) and Beneath The Spaceship (2015), Sweden’s Invargsson now makes an assured step into long-form filmmaking. Adapting the 2015 novel The Living And The Dead In Winsford by Hakan Nesser, she and screenwriter Michèle Marshall provide echoes of page-turner adaptations like Girl On The Train and Woman In The Window in this story’s twisting perspectives, and overall it is a package that should attract attention following its London Film Festival debut. The fact that large swathes of dialogue are in English may also help it travel. 

A dialogue-free opening sequence demonstrates Ingvarsson and Turestedt’s ability to convey much with little. In a stylish house in Sweden, TV host Maria (Turestedt) discovers a man we presume to be her husband asleep on the sofa, surrounded by empty bottles. Her stony face suggests this is a regular occurrence; the slow prowl of the camera towards the sleeping figure hints at a deep-rooted discontent.

Discontent, it turns out, is the least of it. Maria is caught in the middle of a media maelstrom after her successful academic husband Magnus (Thomas W Gabrielsson) has been accused of rape. He denies it, but in a flippant, sneering kind of way that makes his guilt plain. His colleagues have nevertheless closed ranks around him, already working on his rehabilitation campaign. Magnus treats Maria with a casual, dismissive disrespect, despite the fact that she has has been dutifully copy editing his much-lauded work alongside her day job. (A theme shared with 2017 drama The Wife.)

In fact, Magnus is so immediately, pantomime-villain repugnant that it is a mystery why self-proclaimed feminist Maria has stayed with him for 27 years; a scene in which she espouses independence to the glamorous housewife of one of Magnus’s friends smacks of double standards. Magnus and Maria are visiting the couple in his native Poland on the way to Morocco — a destination chosen unilaterally by Magnus — where he will write a book that is intended to shift the spotlight away from those unpalatable accusations. But when Maria finally snaps in the face of Magnus’s unrelenting unpleasantness, her journey takes an unexpected turn.

Maria eventually finds herself in the wilds of Exmoor, renting an isolated country house with just her dog Castor for company, and the film shifts its focus from a broken marriage to a fracturing psyche. Maria seems initially at home in the desolate landscape and responsive to the easy kindness of the locals — particularly nearest neighbour Mark (an endearing Kris Hitchen), with whom she feels a tentative spark. She engrosses herself in finishing Magnus’s manuscript. But, detached from her normal, ordered life and increasingly plagued by her own actions (which we can easily guess, but are revealed in regular flashback/dream sequences) the film begins to take on the feeling of a psychological horror. 

Atmospheric camerawork from Michael Dymek prowls the windswept moors and captures huge skies of incredible purples and yellows, against which Maria is often silhouetted, vulnerable against the unforgiving elements. Shadows form at the edge of the frame, unfamiliar shapes manifest on the horizon. Throughout, Ingvarsson implicitly invites her audience to judge Marina, engage with her moral dilemmas, examine her behaviours and draw conclusions. One thing is unequivocal, though; while society gives Magnus the freedom, support and encouragement to wear his heinous transgressions lightly, Maria is left entirely undone by hers.