Highly Overrated But Still Good

From my favorite movies..

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Blistering performances.

Una is: Exploitation at best ~ movie making and writing at its cheapest. Badly paced: Shot in a very large factory warehouse so the camera can simply follow characters as they wander from one side to the other then down corridors - moving in and out of various rooms to painfully pad out the length of this 50min (maximum) story to full feature length. It's a sensationalistic story, where the audience is turned into voyeurs as we are forced to eavesdrop while the writer and director gloat over numerous vile situations - involving an older married man interfering with a 13yr old girl. Very little class on display here - simply movie makers attempting to add an arty veneer over some overripe paedophilia obscenities. Even the supposed shattering climax is not delivered but ends up looking more like another lame excuse. I suppose this gives academia and movie aficionados an excuse to psychoanalyse the 'lives' of artificial (spelt 'Fake') characters & writings. From the look of the low box-office returns - the majority of audiences need more than vulgar details to qualify for their time and money. Expect a few walkouts on this offering.

Una is uncomfortable and unnerving viewing, a film that will make your skin crawl on more than one occasion but thanks to some award worthy turns from its impressive lead performers, Benedict Andrews film is noteworthy as a character driven, dialogue heavy expose of some very heavy material.Andrews film, which is based on David Harrower's esteemed play, keeps its stage play roots well and truly at the forefront as Rooney Mara's tormented Una takes a road trip to confront Ben Mendelsohn's factory foreman Peter, a man she knows from her childhood as Ray and a man with whom she had an illegal relationship with as a 13 year old teenage girl.Largely taking place in Peter's workplace as he and Una discuss what happened, what could've been and what they feel, we get brief yet confronting flashbacks to Peter and Una's forbidden affiliation but mostly Andrews is focussing solely on Mara and Mendelsohn as the two competent performers work off each other too slowly tear away the layers to reveal their true motivations and inward thoughts.Mara once again shows she is willing to be laid bare as an actress in another noteworthy turn while Mendelsohn, who has recently been cast more as a purely bad guy type role, gets one of his meatiest feature film roles yet as Peter.His far from a likable or respectable person but Mendelsohn plays him to perfection, giving Peter just the right amount of humanity and against all the odds moments of compassion.It's a role that could've fallen either way but the Aussie actor once more showcases why his regarded now as one of our all-time great exports. With Mara he shares a wonderful energy, while with the younger Una played by Ruby Stokes, Mendelsohn plays the role not predatory but more purely sad, a man consumed by feelings and urges that lead him to make his life's biggest mistake.Una's greatest flaw as a film and ability too fully connect is strangely with the character of Una herself.We feel her pain and understand the confusion and mental strain that has been bought down upon her but her reasoning behind confronting Peter and then her subsequent decisions from there are not that easy to understand. For a film that in many ways feels so realistic and raw, Una's consistently odd behaviour is hard to take, even when at times she is a heartbreakingly broken soul searching for closure on her past.Final Say – Not what you'd call an entertaining watch, thanks to some dark subject material and sombre to bleak tone, Una is an immaculately acted tale whose flawed characters don't always connect but thanks to Mara and Mendelsohn and Andrews carefully weighted hand behind-camera, this is a bleak drama that's a cut-above many similar productions.3 ½ Ferris Wheel rides out of 5

Yes, this film is well done, thought provoking, etc., with all the deserved kudos given it, but my one problem with both this film and another, also referenced by another commenter, The Girl in the Book, is that both actresses could have and should have portrayed their younger selves. Nobody's physical appearance changes that much from teens to twenties, even into early thirties, and it's just always jarring to see a completely different actor who never looks or acts anything like their older counterpart. Rooney Mara could easily have played younger, as could the other actress in the other film, and the problem with both is that the younger actresses in both films steal so much focus that it's hard to go back to viewing the older actresses within the same story without having to consciously and constantly adjust, which, to me, anyway, ruins the flow.

This review of Una is spoiler free*** (3/5)IT'S ONLY A short time into Benedict Andrews' flawed but powerful paean about the complications of life after child abuse. When we have Rooney Mara's tile character Una, walking into her former neighbour's workplace to confront him about their past, specifically to ask him questions about his leaving after a sexual encounter the two had when she was 13-years-old. Written by David Harrower from his own complex play Blackbird. First time director Andrews depicts a series of heart wrenching events from a beautifully sun drenched barbecue party, with a young Una meeting her neighbour, Rey (Ben Mendelsohn) for the first time (fantastic work by newcomer Ruby Stokes), to him sitting in a court room awaiting a hearing in a couple of the many shining flashbacks. He shoots these brilliant moments with gripping almost real results. Led by Mara's brave naked performance and Mendelsohn's unflinching persona Una is a riveting drama which succeeds in almost all aspects. It's not always an easy watch as Rey seduces this young girl, there's no graphic imagery on show but the words between Una and Rey physically describing what he did to her is enough to make you shudder. Physically she's damaged; she's been in constant pain for most of her life. Emotionally she's changed which her concerning mother (Fitzgerald) sees and tries to make amends by talking to her. There are moments when her intent to be a hesitant woman bringing the good-cop-bad-cop routine card into the game, sometimes making her a brutal force sucking in all the sympathy. Rey, however, is the opposite, he is a broken man he feels sorry for leaving her in that situation. Throughout their conversation he begs for forgiveness hoping for one last drop of sympathy. Mendelsohn is so brilliantly nuanced here that he somehow manages to at least evoke a semblance of pity from the audience. While this works for a while thanks to Andrews' powerful direction managing to hold nothing back from his understanding of the characters to the general impact of drama. It's not always on top of its game as there are buried problems - one is the pacing, some of the story fails to translate itself from Harrower's intelligent playwriting as some of it feels overly slow. And some of the flashbacks intertwine a few of the more important confrontation scenes. This unfortunately tends to be the bigger problem as it often can become difficult to follow a certain point of the story. Despite this Una is a riveting provocative drama with outstanding tour de force performances from both parties. Though uncomfortable in its material, it's a unique way of filmmaking which almost manages to be real - even after the credits have rolled it stays with you forever.VERDICT: Worth the watch for the magnetic lead performances. But some of it feels that the play isn't correctly translated on the screen.