[j. hogg] archipelago (2010)

무슨 다비드의 한 그림과 같았던 장면.
내가 좋아했던 샷.
정물성으로 인성과 감성을 대신한
맘에 드는 영화였다.

여기 beautifully written review..
Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian

Like unhappy little islands, entire of themselves, some lonely people cluster together for an unsuccessful family reunion in this deeply intelligent new film from British director Joanna Hogg. There is something exacting and audacious in it, something superbly controlled in its composition and technique. The clarity of her film-making diction is a marvel – even, or perhaps especially, when the nature of the story itself remains murkily unrevealed.

Hogg works with a series of static "tableau" camera positions. There is no musical soundtrack, just the ambient sound of birdsong or distant aeroplane buzz, only really apparent when it cuts out into silence for the next scene. Closeups are rare, and when the camera does move – just once in the entire film – it is to reflect something calamitous. Perhaps what emerges primarily is Hogg's sense of light: her screen is alternately washed with cold, clear daylight, then suddenly plunged into a dusky gloom for another outdoor scene and into a different, disorientating kind of twilight for an interior sequence. Hogg and her director of photography, Ed Rutherford, appear to rely simply on the available light from the window, but will consciously direct the camera towards this light source so that the human figures are in semi-darkness or silhouette: they appear masked, or blinded, feeling their way.

Tom Hiddleston (who also appeared in Hogg's first film, Unrelated) plays Edward, a well-spoken young man in the throes of a quarter-life crisis. He is quitting his job in the City to travel to Africa, doing volunteer educational work to promote safe sex and combat the spread of Aids. To see him off, his mother Patricia (Kate Fahy) and sister Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) have organised a family holiday-cum-farewell-party on Tresco in the Isles of Scilly in a cottage they often rented in years gone by. An invitation has also been extended to Patricia's estranged husband, who appears to have expressed the vague intention of coming.

Because this is supposed to be a special family-only affair, they have forbidden Edward to bring his girlfriend (to Edward's irritation) but have nonetheless invited some outsiders: Christopher – played by the non-professional actor and real-life artist Christopher Baker – has been hired to teach Patricia how to paint the beautiful surrounding landscapes. And bizarrely, even though there will only ever be three, or at most four, to dinner, Patricia has hired a professional cook, Rose (Amy Lloyd) to prepare all their meals and wash up.

Instantly, the nexus of ulterior motives and mental crises creates a crackling atmosphere of anxiety and clenched resentment. Could it be that Patricia and Cynthia have engineered this whole event, and moreover deliberately overlaid it with an air of importance and sadness, for various reasons of their own? And could it be that poor, muddled Edward is all too ready to be talked out of his African plan, because he actually doesn't have the smallest idea what to do with his life? Excruciatingly, he comes close   to putting the moves on baffled,   wary Rose.

The authentically sour tang of brother-sister strife flavours the film from the outset, and would be funny if it weren't so uncomfortable. Edward is supercilious and self-regarding, but also painfully defensive; we can see exactly why Cynthia should be so exasperated with him, and yet also sympathise with Edward at Cynthia's rattiness, her uptightness, her pre-emptive sense of grievance. Edward thinks that not inviting Rose to sit down with them at the table is a little absurd, and so it is, and yet she has been hired as a cook, so insisting would be uncomfortable. To make up for it, they invite her to a restaurant meal, which Cynthia promptly spoils by complaining and making a fuss, and Hogg lets us wonder if the fuss-making is displacement activity, a symptom of deeper problems.

Edward's African adventure begins to look unlikely, upstaged by the stunning reality of the Isles of Scilly themselves, so beautiful and exotic, like something Gauguin might paint.Hogg has found some glorious images in this landscape, and incidentally offers her audience some uncompromisingly upper-middle class scenarios. We see people shooting partridges; we see their beaters – and without any indication that they are therefore snobs. This, with the picnic scene, has something of Jean Renoir, but it is intensely English. A shot of a partridge being plucked reminded me of Withnail & I, and the whole movie has a very Withnailish feel of having gone on holiday by mistake.

These are people who, simply, don't know each other all that well, despite being "family". They are put in situations of intimacy, with no interest or skill in being intimate. It is Christopher, with his diffident, almost Tony Blairish mannerisms, who shows a gentle compassion and delicacy and comes to be almost a father figure to Edward.

Some tropes are familiar from Hogg's first film. There are desperate one-side-of-the-telephone-conversation scenes, awful scenes of having to listen to a furious row: the trumpeting of the elephant in the living room next door. There is less emotional engagement than in Unrelated, but this is, in its way, the more subtle film – mysterious, enigmatic, with things left unsaid. More Ayckbournish than Chekhovian, Hogg's film-making is still utterly distinctive. It's a difficult watch and a difficult sell, but this is quietly outstanding.