Despite an excellent central performance from Rampling this film is not easy and is not engaging. It is tedious.
The story and its telling recalls Antonioni, think of: Il Grido, il Deserto Rosso, L'Avventura and La Notte, with characters who barely intersect, let alone have any connection to each other, solitary, desperate, fearful, they stumble about the world, tiny and wretched. And that is exactly what 'Hannah' replicates.
Yet with Antonioni the films had a trajectory about a social and personal gulf which 'Hannah' doesn't', Hannah simply records the mundane as the mundane and even with a veteran in Rampling to give the merest levels of drama, it still falls short.
In a film the dramatic premise is necessary, such a narrative as 'Hannah' simulates are possible in prose, they work very well on the page, but in a film the internal represented as physical space is insufficient. It's only observation.
In some respects 'Hannah' is like a reality show, but whereas those shows tease the audience with sexual anticipation, Hannah ruthlessly records the anxiety of a lonely, miserable, woman.
The story and its telling recalls Antonioni, think of: Il Grido, il Deserto Rosso, L'Avventura and La Notte, with characters who barely intersect, let alone have any connection to each other, solitary, desperate, fearful, they stumble about the world, tiny and wretched. And that is exactly what 'Hannah' replicates.
Yet with Antonioni the films had a trajectory about a social and personal gulf which 'Hannah' doesn't', Hannah simply records the mundane as the mundane and even with a veteran in Rampling to give the merest levels of drama, it still falls short.
In a film the dramatic premise is necessary, such a narrative as 'Hannah' simulates are possible in prose, they work very well on the page, but in a film the internal represented as physical space is insufficient. It's only observation.
In some respects 'Hannah' is like a reality show, but whereas those shows tease the audience with sexual anticipation, Hannah ruthlessly records the anxiety of a lonely, miserable, woman.