In the first minutes of Guernsey, the Dutch director Nanouk Leopold few static images needed to familiarize ourselves with the everyday world of its protagonist. Anna (Maria Kraakman) is irrigation specialist and commutes between her work in Egypt and her family in the Netherlands and forth. When she and her husband and her son is not changed, although very few words, otherwise Anna seems at first glance, but lead a completely normal life.

Even in the first setting of the film is distinguished from the formalist approach of Leopold. The cool, carefully composed images are still aesthetically and stylized enough to avoid being assigned to one of documentary realism and Sozialpessimismus oriented category of films. A look at the figures is detached, almost apathetic. As Leopold consistently pursued this style was already evident a few moments after its introduction in Anna's life: Back in Egypt they learned the sympathetic colleague, Patricia (about Aurélia Petit), just like she is a young, successful professional woman and mother. The greater the shock when one morning, Anna discovers the hanged body of this woman. Even on a high point like this, it fails to Leopold, also emphasize using cinematic means and to dramatize.

Guernsey does not address this traumatic experience as a massive turning point in Anna's life, when he will prove later. Immediately after the tragic incident, Anna was still equips from the husband of the deceased a short visit and then go back home without showing a little or lose a word about what happened. Leopold does not pretend to read in the psyche of its protagonist as an open book to you. As a viewer you never know exactly what is going on in Anna behind her expressionless appearance. The entire movie about it somehow seems far away and absent, as if she were separated from the outside world. Even if Anna's father announces to his children that he will sell the family property, to go with his new wife on the British Channel Island of Guernsey, or if Anna caught her husband cheating, she remains calm, and seems unable to respond. It is significant that her protagonist Leopold shows twice in the ambivalent role of a voyeur. At the position of an observer who can not or will engage, Leopold demonstrates graphically how Anna's dilemma.

Together with directors such as Fien Troch, Cyrus Frisch or Alex Van Warmerdam Leopold heard on a small but very interesting scene of contemporary Dutch filmmaker whose films are perhaps this country will see at the festival context. But Guernsey is also a bit bulky film, which is quite a challenge for the viewer. He just can not be reduced to a single reading as an inventory of alienated subjects in modern society or as a marriage and family drama, but combines its various aspects largely non-hierarchically to each other. Guernsey seems very calm mood and undramatic staging as softly and quietly as his protagonist. Since the emotional high points are not highlighted by the formal language of the act, one must be attentive than viewers and raise the attention to detail.

It seems more intense when Anna's suppressed emotions burst out suddenly at the end of control for a brief moment of it. That moment has not only a very cathartic effect, but gives his speechless protagonist affected by either, at least temporarily, one vote. Not for nothing Leopold has opted for the one piece of music of the film for a cover version of Tuxedomoon songs "In A Manner of Speaking". It says in the chorus: "Give Me The Words That Tell Me Nothing, Give Me The Words That Tell Me Everything".