Review of Hannah (2018) by Dennis H — 16 Sep 2017

Charlotte Rampling puts on a one-woman show in this drama depicting a woman's life since the imprisonment of her husband. While winning the Best Actress award at Venice, the film itself is a long and dreadful series of pretentious overacting resulting from the deliberate obscurity of the main issue from the audience, cutting off their ability to relate and sympathize with the protagonist.

If you wanted to see an experienced actress in an acting class, this would be it. It pretty much contains so many exercises that one might call it an improv instructions manual. The subtle relief of not being judged by children - check, the embarrassment of being banned from a public swimming pool - check, the desperation of being rejected by ones own child - check, oh and of course, pretending to be in an acting class - several examples actually. While Rampling proves she can act anything, we never find out what she or her husband did that was so horrible. And so all these emotions become merely senseless fragments, unworthy of anyone's emotional investment, let alone appreciation.