Avis Metacritic

In most movies, something happens; in Archipelago, many things happen, quietly yet meaningfully.

There is something exacting and audacious in it, something superbly controlled in its composition and technique. The clarity of her film-making diction is a marvel – even, or perhaps especially, when the nature of the story itself remains murkily unrevealed.

Archipelago is a sharply observed and excruciatingly honest exploration of family relationships and the mess that we call life. Hogg has proven herself here to be one of Britain's most important film-makers.

No other British director is making films quite like this.

Archipelago confirms Hogg as a daring and mischievous artist, and a major British talent whose next move will be intriguing.

In long, static takes, Hogg calmly exposes the gulf between polite facades and repressed resentments.

This is a beautifully distilled and literally still work that lingers in the mind long after its conclusion.

Shot with grace and precision but paced with all the urgency of a Sunday afternoon stroll, Joanna Hogg's Haneke-lite study of an English middle class family is a well-crafted affair elevated by terrific moments.

Filmed in permanent twilight with a static camera and no music, it is gloomy and unrewarding with an oblique and uninformative script.