Joanna Hogg’s ‘Exhibition’

Three years ago I posted here about Joanna Hogg's second film, Archipelago, and later added something about her first, Unrelated. Now her third film, Exhibition, has been released in the UK. It is a portrait of a marriage with three people in it, or to be more precise, a childless couple and their house. The pair are identified in Kafakaesque style only as D and H, and are played by Viv Albertine and Liam Gillick respectively. Albertine was born in 1954, lives in Hackney and is probably best known for being a guitarist in the female punk band the Slits. Gillick was born in 1964, lives in New York, was a YBA and is now a conceptual artist. The house was built in 1969 in Kensington (inner West London) as a late Modernist residence for its architect, James Melvin (1912-2011), to whom the film is dedicated. From recent interviews (eg with cinema scope and the Guardian) it seems that Albertine, Killick, Melvin and the house are, or were, well-known to Hogg.

D and H, after twenty years residence, have decided to sell their house with the help of estate agents (US: realtors), so providing a cameo role for Tom Hiddlestone. He appeared at length in Unrelated and Archipelago but has been busier since. The couple are both artists with workspaces on separate floors of the house, not that they seem to work very intensively. They often communicate, but not about much, using the internal phone. This is understandable since moving between floors involves either traversing a spiral staircase or business with a tricky lift (US: elevator). We see a lot of D nervously moping around the house - she doesn't get out much. Whether the source of her unhappiness is professional, marital, sexual or selling the house, or all four, is opaque, as is their reason for selling or where they are going. Perhaps there has been an intruder, D is nervously security conscious. Apart from the estate agents, the other characters are minor and tiresome. There are numerous sequences centred on D which may be dreams, fantasies or, in at least one case, flashbacks. Hogg continues to avoidusing those cinematographic conventions such as tracking, zooming and panning which usually help carry the viewer along with the screenplay, so D and H's farewell party with a fire eater and a metaphorical demolition of the house comes as a relief. It seems to cheer them up no end, too. Finally, as they pack some books, D tells H that she has been offered a solo show, or, as he then refers to it, 'exhibition'.

I should point out that most of the film critics in the serious media seem to have a high opinion of Exhibition. For example, Kate Muir in The Times awarded it five stars (out of five) and enthused:

Hogg wrote and directed Exhibition and the ideas developed in her films Unrelated and Archipelago have been given full expression here in a drama of sharp intelligence and insight. Some may find it slow and pretentious, dealing as it does with the privileged classes’ First World problems. But if Hogg is an acquired taste, I have now acquired it.

Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian also gave 5/5 and warned off those of us who like their envelopes the way they are:

Joanna Hogg is an artist and film-maker who entrances and enrages. After the first wave of praise from fans (such as me), her movies tend to get a backlash of incredulity and scorn from those who would prefer the envelope unpushed and unmolested. In the runup to its release, this latest film has already provoked some giggles and putdowns online. Some of the tweets I've been getting have felt like seat-bangs from some derisive digital walkout. It only makes me love her more.

Mark Kermode in the Observer was less generous at 3/5 and commented:

As with Hogg's previous films, Unrelated and Archipelago, there's an underlying desire to scream at the suffocatingly insular bourgeois ennui; certainly, Exhibition requires both patience and tolerance to get beneath its chilly surface. But under the uninviting skin there's an honest depiction of the ebb and flow of a long-term relationship between two people whose passions affix to objects other than each other; who remain co-dependent, if distant; and whose often queasily frank interactions (played out in unforgiving single takes) seem utterly genuine and not a little uncomfortable. Add to this an element of surreal invention (past and present intertwining, personalities fracturing) and Exhibition reaffirms Hogg's status as a distinctive, singular and challenging voice of British cinema.

In the face of such enthusiasm from those whose views count, I will only offer the opinion that I thought Exhibition to be less satisfactory than Archipelago, and, not for the first time here, resort to facts as a substitute for offering an opinion ("not raving but droning"). But DIY'ers of both sexes might like to know that Ikea's BEKVÄM step stool is available as a flat pack for £11 in the UK (only 9.99 euros in France). As Ikea explain: "Hand-hole in the top step makes the step stool easy to move" and "... you can treat it with BEKVÄM glazing paint to make the surface less slippery and more hard wearing and personal". Indeed.

Joanna Hogg’s ‘Archipelago’

As I began to read Harry Eyres’s The Slow Lane article, Spotlight on a class apart, in the FT on 19 March, I almost wanted to give Archipelago a miss:

I went to see Joanna Hogg’s latest film, Archipelago, for family reasons – not just because she happens to be a cousin of mine but also because I imagined the film, about an upper-middle-class family having a fraught holiday in the Scilly Isles, might strike some familiar chords.

then later:

Among the birdsongs featured, Hogg has confirmed to me, are those of the stonechat, chiffchaff, whitethroat, curlew, songthrush and wren

After seeing Archipelago, I’m glad my initial suspicions of Eyres’ article being little more than a shameless plug for a relative were unfounded. Most of his article is a slightly tedious apologia for Hogg having made a film about the “upper-middle-classes”. Eyres, (who at 53 may now look a tad older than in his FT photo), judging from remarks made in previous The Slow Lane columns, comes from the upper classes, even though he seems to want to demote himself to the upper-middle. Whether he and Hogg are related to the well-known Eyres family who came with William the Conqueror, I have no idea. And, as one of humble origins, I don't have to agonise about the class stuff. The question is: is it a good film?

Eyres thought it was a small masterpiece, but I’m not so sure. Certainly anyone who admires films like Woody Allen’s September or the films of Eric Rohmer will enjoy it. Conversely, if you’d rather watch paint dry, then you won’t. By the way, Eric Rohmer’s films (and I’ve seen nearly all of them) are usually about the petite bourgeoisie, not haute as Eyres says, and anyway class is different in France. The problems for me were in the photography and in the plot, not the people.

Nearly all the filming was static and long shot, with the action (actors, helicopters etc) moving in and out of frame. Rohmer fans will be familiar with this, but over-used it does get a bit tiring. For me, some tracking and panning are integral to cinematography, as is the use of closer shots of actors as a means for identifying with the characters, something which Hogg seemed to adopt only towards the end.

The plot concerns three members (mother about 50; son, daughter in their 20s) of an archipelagic family being unhappy in their own way on holiday in Tresco (one of the Isles of Scilly, west of SW England). A young woman is employed as cook. An artist coaches mother and daughter and philosophises with the son. However, the holiday is supposed to last a fortnight (in late October judging by the weather and a poppy being worn), but the action and character development doesn’t match – it seems more like a long weekend. The son’s girlfriend is barred from coming; the father never appears; the daughter, attractive, difficult, seems to have no significant other; the son relationship’s with the cook doesn’t evolve (surely not because her class!). These non-happenings detract from the credibility of a realist film. After nearly two hours in the cinema, little seems to have been resolved – just like real life, then - and the knives are packed away to be used another time.

It was good, but not in my mind a “small masterpiece”. However, I have ordered the DVD of Joanna Hogg’s first feature, Unrelated, and I will watch out for her next (Archipelago is already on DVD, by the way). Eric Rohmer didn’t make the third of his Contes moraux, Ma nuit chez Maud, until he was 49, and finished his Contes des quatre saisons at 78. Hogg is a mere 51, so plenty of time for a masterpiece!

ADDENDUM 2 May 2011

I have now watched Hogg’s first film, Unrelated, set in Tuscany, and again there is an “upper middle class” family on the sort of holiday where people are paid to cook for them. They are joined by Anna, a childless forty-something escaping temporarily from a relationship problem, played well by Kathryn Worth. She tries to hang out with the adolescent children (Tom Hiddleston plays the son in this one, too) but fails and finishes up gaining solace from her own generation. The chronology and plot work better than in Archipelago and there’s a similar bags-in-the-hall scene at the end. On the DVD extra Hogg talks about her work – to me she still seems more the photographer that she used to be than a cinematographer. She explains that her use of still shots is a consequence of digital filming technology. Elsewhere, I have read that she intends to direct a third film, to make up a trilogy. She says she will be “returning to the theme of childlessness that I raised in Unrelated, combined with the continued exploration into what family means. I see something that is highly coloured, crowded with people and more physical with a redemptive, optimistic outlook.” Sounds like a holiday in India next.

Maybe I’ve got an eye for the wrong sort of detail, but in the Night Swimming scene in Unrelated, there seems to be a continuity error – or was it part of Anna’s come-on?

ADDENDUM 26 July 2012

To fill newspaper columns at this time of the year, a favourite standby is to round up some suitable names and ask them where they are going on holiday or what books they are going to read. So on 21/22 July in FT Life and Arts various luminaries were asked about their ideal summer breaks, including Joanna Hogg, Film-maker and screenwriter:

How are you spending the summer?
I’m preparing a new film but in August I’m escaping to Göcek in Turkey to relax with 15 friends on a gulet, a traditional sailing boat. …
Where would you like to go next?
Japan in the autumn with [artist husband] Nick but, because of filming, this trip will have to wait until 2013. …

Her IMDb entry sheds no more light currently.  Tom Hiddleston looks a bit busy these days.