Hide and Seek

Oh dear! What a mess!

There's little storyline to the whole thing. Four twenty somethings drop out and do the fourth way kind of gig on a country farm. Think, let's make a little free love commune, without all the hippy paraphernalia. There's little back story to anyone and not much exposition in general. Quite honestly director and co-writer Joanna Coates doesn't appear to have done the hard yards on this project at all.

Lots of repetition of scenes; lying around the farm yard, pretentious little group concerts and plays (burning cardboard coffins?) and nightly musical beds. Some ex-boyfriend drops in for a bit and then leaves in a huff and it all ends up with an orgy, that drags on for a few minutes, where we don't see much, because it's filmed in such extreme close-up.

Way back in 1969 Paul Mazursky directed a (kind of) similar-themed movie called Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. I never thought it was a particularly good film, though it was a resounding critical and commercial success. It had two big things going for it that Joanna Coates has completely ignored in her making of Hide & Seek. First it had some sort of story happening with its four main characters and second it had a sense of humour and didn't take itself too seriously.

The most interesting thing I can say about Hide and Seek is that Gemma Arterton's (one of my favourites) little sister Hannah, is one of the four "stars", all of whom had very little with which to work. One of them, Daniel Metz can take a certain portion of the blame for that too, as he co-wrote the very thin script with Coates.

Seen at the Edinburgh International Film Festival 2014. 'Hide and Seek' has a simple story: Leah, a young woman unsure of what she wants from life, inherits an isolated cottage in the country. She invites three other youngsters - a woman and two men - to move in with her on the understanding a different combination - female/male, female/female and male/male - will share what they call the 'marital bed' each night. In between bouts in the bed they while away the hours lazing in the garden or staging evening 'entertainments' (art class, a pretend camping trip, mock funeral etc).

And that's it, really; there's not much sign of a conventional storyline here, although the film does have a beginning, middle and end. Director Joanna Coates keeps the pace constant, if slow; and pulls off the difficult trick of making the sex scenes reasonably explicit but also rather discrete (a vigorous five-finger shuffle aside). (Incidentally, don't get the wrong idea - there aren't so many sex scenes, and they're all pretty brief - this isn't soft porn.) The four young leads - none of whom are drop-dead gorgeous, which adds to the realism of the piece, although none of them looks bad naked - cope well enough with their roles, although for me acting honours go to Hannah Arterton as the girl who breaks a romance of five years to join the group; she utilises a range of facial ticks which on another actor might have seemed too much like Acting - Arterton, however, makes them quite natural.

OK, I tried mightily to see the "artsy" aspect of this film. However with a lack of (1) a story line, (2) character development, (3) a plot, along with (4) insipid cinematography, there really wasn't much of anything going for it. The setting was 'meh' and the actors' lack of attractiveness (which might have made the supposed concept more plausible) also contributed to the feeling that I was being ripped off by watching.The idea of polyamorous relationships or even the nudity on display did not turn me off. I was just left with nothing but questions, not the least of which was, "Why was I wasting my time watching this?" The 'idea' behind the movie was perhaps revolutionary but it didn't seem in the least plausible. No wonder they had trouble finding backers as this wasn't more than a whisper of a film. Just hope the actors kept their day jobs!

"Hide and Seek" is a tale of 4 young adults, who chose to move to the countryside, live in nature, share everything, be perfectly equal and free.

The two boys and two girls find innocent ways of entertaining each other and making the weeks pass, as if they want to reduce life to an infinite melancholic childhood experience.

This concept of pure escapism also involves the protagonists loving each other equally. The movie does not hold back on displaying sex and sexuality and it requires an open mind to appreciate it.

"Hide and Seek" is certainly no commercial entertainment and the narrative as it is makes it feel more like an art project than a fictional movie, but for a first-length feature the director show her talent and the brave performances of the cast are impressive.

With little preamble, four young adults go to live in an isolated country cottage and unleash their imaginations and libidos. I am not sure what this film is trying to say, but I understand how it is being said.

This is a stylish film, filled with pastoral scenes of solitude and contemplation. The four are initially guarded and awkward, but as time passes, they organically grow as a foursome, granting each other permission to experiment and unleash they childish impulses for fun. As the days and nights unfold, the lines between reality and fantasy/pretend become blurred. Ultimately, they must learn to trust each other if their experiment is to continue.

This film might have been titled "polyamorous", given the nature of their relationship after weeks of intimate seclusion. It is primarily a series of vignettes, providing glimpses into their evolving four-person relationship. They achieve some measure of freedom from social conventions, but the experiment is open-ended.