Disturbing reunion at the core of bleak drama

Una 15 cert, 92 min

Una is a sparse, icy film fighting a little too hard against the fact it used to be a play – Blackbird, by David Harrower, the Scottish playwright. The core, though, remains the scalp-prickling reunion between 20-something Una (Rooney Mara), and the middle-aged Ray (Ben Mendelsohn), who had a sexual relationship with her when she was 13. After the breakdown and exposure of their liaison, Ray spent four years in jail, and built a new life as a factory middle-manager. Now called Peter, he has a lavish home with a new wife (Natasha Little), all of which is threatened when Una tracks him down.

Throughout, the tension hinges on whether Ray’s past will be exposed. And, indeed, whether it should be. He insists he is not like other paedophiles, and has never come close to reoffending – Una, significantly named, was his “only one”.

Mendelsohn, a wizard of moral shading, makes tone do all the persuasion, even while Harrower’s screenplay leaves plenty of room for doubt. He feels absolutely right for the role. Director Benedict Andrews, a stage veteran making his film debut, comes at him with a striking ambush by camera, pinning him visually against his sterile new environment.

Una’s desolation is clear: she has a one-night stand at the beginning and behaves like a robot with her mother (Tara Fitzgerald). In flashback, she’s played wonderfully by Ruby Stokes, introduced lolling in her garden, in conscious homage to Kubrick’s Lolita. Andrews does a sharp job, too, with the bleak details of Una’s abandonment 15 years earlier, when the pair were hiding away in a small coastal town.

But Mara’s performance is strangely uneven, and her porcelain remoteness should yield a more interesting reading than it does.

Maybe she’s just played one too many traumatised loners to make this Una unique. TR