Una (2016)

Directed by: Benedict Andrews | 94 minutes | drama | Actors: Ruby Stokes, Rooney Mara, Ben Mendelsohn, Riz Ahmed, Tara Fitzgerald, Xanthe Gibson, Richard Cunningham, Ciarán McMenamin, Katie Money, Poppy Corby-Tuech, Tobias Menzies, Emilee Roscamp, Isobelle Molloy, Jessica Jean Harland Stubbs, Grainne Keenan , Indira Varma, Dan Ball, Sophie Stanton

Una is the name of the beautiful but unhappy lead actress (Rooney Mara). The young woman goes out, but doesn’t seem to enjoy it. The fleeting sexual contact with an unknown man in one of the toilets of the nightclub does not bring her any pleasure either. The next day we learn a little more about her. Apparently she still lives at home with her mother, but the relationship with her mother is rather difficult. It will be an important day for Una. She leaves by car, to a destination still unknown to the viewer.

In a large shed, which turns out to be her destination, she asks about Ray, but when she shows a photo, the friendly employee (Riz Ahmed) recognizes him as ‘Pete’. The meeting between Ray/Pete (Ben Mendelsohn) and Una is very awkward, but Una has no intention of leaving until she has achieved her goal.

In flashbacks it slowly becomes clear what happened between the two: when Una was thirteen, she had a relationship with Ray. He was her much older neighbor and a friend of her father. The relationship eventually resulted in Ray’s proposal to run off together. It doesn’t come to that, but Ray is convicted of sexually abusing a minor. After serving his sentence, he has built a new life. Una, on the other hand, still lives in the parental home, where she is confronted daily with the traumas from her past. Not a new beginning for her, but a life she hates intensely.

The interplay between the scenes from the past and the biting but emotional dialogues between the present day Una and Pete is very good, the fragments reinforce each other and keep the viewer on their toes. Initially you feel in the dark about what exactly has happened, but you get – perfectly timed – more and more puzzle pieces handed.

The setting is also well taken: the large company where Pete works and where a large part of the film takes place contains numerous corridors, rooms and doors, sometimes with many windows, sometimes built from partitions, making it cat-and-mouse. game of Una and Pete gets an extra dimension.

‘Una’ continues to intrigue because of the layered acting of the protagonists, leaving you guessing at the truth: is Una looking for revenge, is she finally closing the chapter or does she still have feelings for Ray/Pete? Pete also remains ambivalent; to a large extent you believe his statement that he is definitely not a pedophile, but something still gnaws at me… ‘what if…?’

The film loses some of its power in the third act, but is still worth watching because of the weight that Riz Ahmed’s character puts in this part. ‘Una’ is a beautifully acted, continuously fascinating drama about a forbidden love between two complex characters, their wrong choices and the consequences thereof.