By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 5 cats
Director: Joanna Hogg
Starring: Amy Lloyd | Christopher Baker | Kate Fahy | Lydia Leonard | Tom Hiddleston
Country: united_kingdom
Year: 2014
Running time: 114
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527835/combined
Bruce says: “ARCHIPELAGO begins with a plein air painter working on a canvas. The painting is abstract and is more about mood and feeling than it is about recording facts. Christopher (Christopher Baker), the painter, is only a peripheral character but his observations are crucial to creating the film’s unique atmosphere. Central to the story is a family who has rented a house on Tresco one of the Isles of Sicily situated in the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Cornwall. Within a week Edward (Tom Hiddleston) is departing for Africa for the better part of a year. He will work with AIDS patients. His mother Patricia (Kate Fahy) has decided it would be wonderful to have the family together in a house they had rented many times before. Edward’s sister Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) and mother have arrived first. They have removed an offensive painting over the mantelpiece and chosen their rooms. They have also employed Rose (Amy Lloyd) who will cook and clean during their stay. The father is noticeably absent.
“Joanna Hogg has created a film that is, in itself, a glorious abstraction. The title, although descriptive of the physical surroundings, is also a metaphor for the family: islands, part of a whole yet decidedly unconnected. It is amazing how efficiently Hogg goes about her storytelling. We get snippets of conversation; the essential facts are meted out sparingly. Similarly, she masters the art of distilling and simplifying important information about the physical environment. Hogg moves the camera only when truly necessary which adds to the effect of the characters and landscape as subjects on a large canvas. The awkward silence has rarely been more effectively employed as a telling device.
“Edward, it appears, is a lost soul; certainly he is a young man who has not found his voice. He isn’t sure why he is leaving his girlfriend to go to Africa. We learn from one-ended phone conversations with her husband that Patricia is a sorrowful wife, a victim of a workaholic or philandering husband. Perhaps both. The first phone call begins with a warm, ‘Hello, darling.’ ‘You deserve all our hatred,’ Patricia yells out in the final conversation, establishing that her husband does not care enough to be with her or say goodbye to a son he will not see for another year. Patricia is sublimating her anguish – more than likely an anticipated anguish – by having Christopher teach her how to paint. Cynthia is seemingly the most damaged. Initially some viewers might find her confident and resolute; but her constant complaining and manipulating of situations belie that thought. Rarely has such a despicable character been conceived more deliciously, a credit to both Hogg and Ms. Leonard.
“Edward takes daily refuge in the kitchen. He and Rose have more meaningful discussions than any at the family dinner table. When Edward suggests that Rose be invited to join them at the table, Cynthia’s class boundaries are instantly violated. A scene at a local restaurant is equally telling.
“By the film’s close it appears that Edward has gained strength from his conversations with both Christopher and Rose. Christopher, in particular, is quite direct in responding to Edward’s lament, ‘I really think I’m doing the wrong thing.’ ‘What is the alternative?” Christopher poses. ‘It’s not what you do but the intensity with which you do it. There is no hidden track (in life) waiting for you. All the things that aren’t right accumulate into what is. You’ve got to toughen up.’ At the end of this carefully observed study of the human condition, we learn that the family’s surname is Leighton. One would like to think that they could be descendants of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Frederic Leighton. While the style of the film is Turneresque, the family itself is much more in keeping with a Leighton painting.
“Hogg is in the unlikely position of having three films released in this country in 2014. EXHIBITION (2013) is her latest; ARCHIPELAGO (2010) and UNRELATED (2007) are earlier films that inexplicably have never before made the trip across the Atlantic. Tom Hiddleston (ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE; THE DEEP BLUE SEA; MIDNIGHT IN PARIS; and star of the THOR franchise) appears in all three films. His performance in ARCHIPELAGO is beautifully crafted. 5 cats”