Alone in her empty apartment, from her window Anne observes the people passing by who nervously snatch up the personal belongings and pieces of furniture she has put out on the pavement. Her final gesture of taking a ring off her finger signals she is leaving her previous life in Holland behind to go to Ireland, where she chooses to lead a solitary, wandering existence, striding with her rucksack on her back through the austere landscapes of Connemara. She sets up her tent in the midst of vast empty spaces or facing the sea, savouring her solitude, a solitude however that is sometimes hard to cope with in the cold and the rain. Her encounters with tourists and lorry-drivers who give her lifts, far from giving her pleasure or the warmth of human contact, instead push her to move still further away from human habitation. During her travels, she discovers a house that is home to a hermit, Martin. The latter proposes that she works for him, looking after the house and garden in exchange for food. Anne accepts on the condition that they keep their personal lives out of conversation and restrict their relationship to the work to be done. However, these two solitary beings gradually develop a degree of curiosity about one another. Yet they cannot satisfy it without breaking their pact and compromising their self-imposed isolation, a guarantee of autonomy. Utilising the magnificent colours of the Irish landscapes, changing grey skies, and intensely green grass, the film, with its very sparse dialogue, enables us to hear the sounds of nature, the wind, the sea, the rivers. Nothing Personal explores with great sensitivity this choice of solitude and the problems of both maintaining and renouncing to it that bring together two extreme and uncompromising characters who become attached to one another almost against their will. —Locarno Film Festival
