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Bookmark this pageArchipelago (2010)
Director: Joanna Hogg
Movie review
From Time Out London
British director Joanna Hogg’s first film, ‘Unrelated’, was an intimate and sympathetic, but not uncritical, portrait of upper-middle-class folk and their children on a Tuscan holiday, told from the perspective of one of their friends, a woman, who hangs out with teenagers to escape from troubles in the adult world. For her second film, another low-budget work with an air of improvisation to it, Hogg goes back on holiday, but she leaves the sun in Italy and her alter ego at home to portray a fractured family from the inside during a period of discord and dreadful weather. In ‘Archipelago’, the pretty landscapes of Siena give way to the brooding, changing landscapes of a tiny island in the Isles of Scilly.Patricia (Kate Fahy) and her two children, young adults Edward (Tom Hiddleston) and Cynthia (Lydia Leonard), arrive for a break at a holiday cottage. As rain and wind lash against the windows, Patricia grows exasperated at the absence of her husband, who remains an unheard voice on the phone. Good-natured Edward struggles to hide his angst at where his life is heading and assumes a fatherly role while becoming weirdly familiar with Rose (Amy Lloyd), the family’s hired cook. Cynthia, meanwhile, looms like a dark cloud and snaps and lashes out for no clear reason.
All in all, it’s a very English affair, which is amusing considering that Hogg’s influences are so obviously more broadly European. Characters struggle to say what they mean, or anything at all, and there’s no therapist on hand to lead matters to a neat, inspiring conclusion.Hogg’s second film suggests a director emboldened by her first. She takes risks. Scenes play out in a single take, the camera locked in position, resisting close-ups and giving ‘Archipelago’ an appropriate sense of foreboding and austerity. It also creates space for silences to linger and awkwardness to ferment. There are enough elephants in the room to fill a zoo. If there’s an element of ‘Archipelago’ that doesn’t fully work, it’s the character of a painter (Christopher Baker) who gives the family lessons in his craft. He may remind us of the father’s absence (and absence of warmth, if comments by his kids are accurate) and his musings on art and abstraction may nod to Hogg’s perception of her own work, yet there’s a serene naivety to his delivery that grates and feels condescending when it shouldn’t.
But that’s a quibble. ‘Archipelago’ is a daring new riff on familiar themes. Hogg draws another strong performance from Hiddleston, who plays a very different character from the ballsy recent school leaver in ‘Unrelated’, but again elicits internal screams of horror at his inappropriate relationship with someone outside his gang and over whom he holds
a power he may not perceive. Most of all, ‘Archipelago’ confirms Hogg as a daring and mischievous artist, and a major British talent whose next move will be intriguing.
Author: Dave Calhoun
Time Out London Issue 2115: March 3 - 9, 2011
User reviews of this film
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- Bron Grillo said...
- Posted on Mar 31 2012 11:11 People who find this film boring are a)not using their imagination and b) probably corrupted by the artificial tricks used in reality TV to create drama. The director uses great subltety in pointing us towards the inner emotions of a family undergoing a shift in its dynamics caused by the imminent departure of the son/brother to a dangerous location for a long period. Cynthia the daughter is the eldest who feels she must organize everything. She wants to give her brother a good send-off but childish emothions overcome her.She is furious with Edward for going off and leaving her to cope with the parental break-up. She is upset by the ending of the childhood closeness and safety and jealous of outsiders and because she is annoyed that her need for mothering is being put aside to console her mother she endw up being the one to upwet her. The mother feels abandoned by her husband and now son but is finding solace in art. Edward himself is too nice and makes things worse for the women by his own difficulty in taking charge of his life and leaving the nest. Rose is a simply masterly portrayal of the changing roles between those who serve us and 'servants'. I loved the way she thoughtfully put away the knives - the tensions were over and the family had adfusted itself. She was not sure what had been going on but she had survived! On to the next job.
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- Tom G said...
- Posted on Feb 04 2012 15:00 This must be the MOST BORING film ever. I was tempted to stop watching after 15 minutes but unfortunately thought it may pick up – IT DIDN'T. Please Love Films Ditch it and don't submit anyone else to this dross.
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- ginger1 said...
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Posted on Oct 26 2011 16:14
Beautiful to watch, lovely scenery of Tresco, but incredibly boring,and very upper middle class, so not very interesting to
many people. Probably VERY irritating. - Report as inappropriate
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- Dave said...
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Posted on Sep 05 2011 21:21
Oh My God! If I had watched this load of crap before going on holiday to Tresco I think I would have slit my wrists!
Tresco is fun, beautiful and exciting, the film is not.
Go visit Tresco, don't bother with the fil!omment you type in this box will appear on the site - Report as inappropriate
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- Adrian said...
- Posted on Aug 23 2011 01:32 I really wanted to like this film as I have stayed in Dolphin House on Tresco (where this was filmed) and was on the Island when it was being filmed. And I like slow, arthouse movies! But, like many have said, this was the most boring piece of twaddle I have ever had the misfortune to sit through - and that's about the kindest way I could put it. If I said what I really thought it would be censored. Why they bothered to film it on Tresco is beyond me - they showed so little of the Island. The indoor shots (in Dolphin House) that made up the majority of the film could have been shot anywhere. Give me a decent quality camera and a few mates and I could have made a better movie in a couple of days. I have only given it one star because it's not possible to give it zero!
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- Trueasmath said...
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Posted on Aug 21 2011 16:40
I could have made this film for less than £3000, I would have just filmed a family holiday, I to can leave a camera in the same place for ages. Kinda think my family would be more interesting.
DULL AND VERY BORING, and actually I quite like some slow films, but this was as dead as a doornail. - Report as inappropriate
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- George said...
- Posted on Jul 19 2011 18:06 A very uninteresting film unless you happen to be rich and miserable. These charcters are not even "middle class" they are obviously very rich and can afford to faff around in angst about their lives in considerable luxury. I thought British films stopped focussing on these relics in the 1950s. The "cookie" character is a particularly odd throwback. It was dull and unreal - like one of those awful Woody Allen movies set in London. A really big disappointment, given the hype the director's chums had managed to create.
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- Jennifer Powers said...
- Posted on Jun 11 2011 21:57 Probably the most boring film I have ever seen - and I'm still watching it. Painful.
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- Ian Gavin said...
- Posted on May 01 2011 09:49 This film really seems to divide people. For my money it's a beautifully observed study of the English middle classes in the finest European auteur/art house tradition. I found it a very refreshing film. I can only imagine that the people describing it as 'drivel' etc would feel the same about Bergman, Tarkovsky, Wenders, Herzog, Tarr, etc etc.
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- David Allan said...
- Posted on Apr 28 2011 12:07 Paddy - well that explains it then!!!
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- bartlebyisaqanker said...
- Posted on Apr 28 2011 09:52 I THAY THERE'S SOMETHING WONNNNNG WITH THE GUINEA FOWL!!
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- Paddy said...
- Posted on Apr 27 2011 22:48 This film is very artistic, and has a very complex use of themes. I think that as it has no clear plot, this actually allows the themes to be more thorough and real.
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- David Allan said...
- Posted on Apr 22 2011 13:08 In response to Phil, I'd say the film is nonsense pretending to be entertainment. The story , if there is one, is uninteresting, the characters dull, the acting banal, the cinemataography poor. As to it being funny, I'd say that the only humourous aspect was the laugh that Joanna Hogg had about the fact that people were actually prepared to hand over good money to watch it. It is a load of utter tosh.
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- Tony said...
- Posted on Apr 22 2011 13:01 Lot of people seem to be drifting off commenting on the actual film
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- Phil Ince said...
- Posted on Apr 21 2011 22:23 Amendment; should have said bores like the Farrelly Brothers or modern Mike Leigh (he made some good stuff 30 years ago).
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Cast & crew
Director: Joanna Hogg
Cast: Tom Hiddleston, Kate Fahy, Amy Lloyd, Christopher Palmer full cast
Genre(s): Drama
Rated: 15
Duration: 100 mins
UK Release: Mar 4 2011
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