Nobody Has To Know: Movie Review

Cast: Michelle Fairley, Bouli Lanners

Director: Bouli Lanners

A low key drama set in the hills of Scotland's remote islands, Nobody Has To Know is the kind of film where little is said, but the countryside and subtle looks tell more of the story than any dialogue could.

Game of Thrones' Fairley is Millie MacPherson, a woman declared the Ice Queen of a remote Scottish island. Buttoned up and primly dressed, Millie is not exactly overflowing with the love of the locals. Unlike Phil (Lanners), a middle-aged farmhand, covered in tattoos and the very embodiment of rugged. 

But when Phil suffers a stroke and resultant amnesia, Millie helps nurse him back to health after confessing to him her reasons for doing so. 

Nobody Has To Know has a quiet elegance, but little happens over the film's duration that isn't more keen on using the countryside and locations to proffer insight into Millie and Phil's mindset. 

Not exactly a story that pushes the boundaries of anything daring (aside from a final act twist), Nobody Has To Know gets by on its subtext and the feeling of seizing the moments in life that you can. It helps that with a more mature cast, the fragility that's explored within feels more timely and pressing - but there are elements of ennui which creep in toward the end.

There's a dignity to the direction, though, and some of that is also afforded by the seeming opposites attract approach of the leads. Fairley plays up the prim and proper icier edges of her character and Lanners' gruffer edges rub nicely up against creating a frisson of something that's about later life than more youth-oriented concerns.

Subtlety is the key to Nobody Has To Know and while it is in no rush to get where it needs to, and occasionally risks alienating a younger audience less interested in cinematic craft, it proves to be a quietly thoughtful piece.