27/04/2011

Following in the footsteps of her debut film Unrelated [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2007), British director Joanna Hogg crafts another subtle, unsettling family-on-vacation story. While her first feature took place in Tuscany, Archipelago [+see also:
trailer
film profile] is set in Scilly Iles in the southwest of England. And just as Tuscany is a colourful, sunny region, Unrelated was, for all its austerity, a more approachable work than the decidedly spartan Archipelago, to which the grey skies and rocky islands with artificial gardens play a perfect backdrop.

An upper-class family consisting of son Edward (Tom Hiddleston), mother Patricia (Kate Fahy) and daughter Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) is renting a house on an island for two weeks before Edward goes on an 11-month trip to Africa. The house includes live-in cook Rose (real-life chef Amy Lloyd) while their neighbour is painter Christopher Baker, playing himself, who offers philosophical musings about parallels between art and life that mirror what is happening in the film.

It is not easy – nor intended by Hogg – for the audience to understand what exactly is happening. There is clearly an old, unresolved problem looming over the family, but we never learn what it is. The reason for Cynthia’s bitterness, Patricia’s nervous reticence and Edward’s almost perverse childishness is never revealed, but leads to alternately sickening, outrageous and hilarious situations.

Father Will is absent, alluded to only in daily telephone calls from Patricia, who is growingly frustrated at her inability to make the vacation “work”. Indeed, the emotional inhibition of the English upper class is hardly new, but Hogg’s understated handling of the subject is fresh and challenging.

Archipelago was produced and is handled internationally by Wild Horses Film Company.