Archipelago

This is a maddening movie, though a good one. The structure is just about perfect, and the family's dysfunction unspools in a very controlled way. The acting is universally excellent and clear. The movie makes wonderful use of the unique landscape of the Isle of Scilly, and all in all, I felt I was in the hands of first class creators.

But…

The rhythm is eternally and unchangingly slow. Every scene begins with long, long minutes of barely discernible action. There is, despite the simmering resentments, only a single explosion. This lugubrious technique is both effective and maddening. The movie seems like an experiment in just how far you can go into hazy somnambulance and still create dramatic tension.

Don't watch it when you're sleepy.

The film's name Archipelago, is quite rich, whilst it summons the image of the Isles of Scilly, where the film is set, it also captures this sense of distance between the characters in the film, who are nonetheless part of the same family identity. Cynthia loves her brother Edward deeply, but is unable to express this other than through snide remarks, passive aggressive behaviour, and tantrums. Edward is at a quarter-life crisis, limply compassionate and full of weltschmerz, fashioned after Prince Myshkin, the "idiot" of Dostoevesky's eponymous story.

I also, haha, perhaps somewhat fancifully, like to think of Lyonesse in relation to this film, a kingdom that legendarily connected the Scilly Isles to Cornwall, and then sank into the sea. The Scilly Isles themselves are believed in Roman times to have been one island, named Ennor. Something happened and the connection to the mainland, and of the whole, disintegrated. This is much like what appears to have happened to the family in the film (it's hinted that a childhood visit to the Isles was much more light-hearted).

The film could be regarded as not much of a progression for Joanna Hogg. Both Archipelago and her cinema debut Unrelated (2007) concern upper middle class families on holiday in beautiful locations, the status of trapped outsiders, and feature the motif of an absent character continuously at the end of a telephone. However I think there's something genuinely different about Archipelago, the characters are definitely more sympathetic, and the family dynamic very different (although, such is the shock of actually seeing tangible upper middle class characters on screen that, full of schadenfreude, many British class warriors will make a bee-line for the rotten tomatoes).

The location shooting is somewhat of a kindness from the director to those of us who are so used to seeing British social realist dramas played out against bleak and unforgiving landscapes (Morvern Callar being a notable exception). There are passages in the film where Hogg lets the eye rest on pure landscape photography.

The only real happiness in the film occurs after a cathartic harangue from one character produces a genuine smile from Cynthia, who sees the healing in the foulness. This is symptomatic of a particularly British emotional constipation that is in dire need of mend.

Despite the emotional problems of the family, there are moments of genuine hilarity in the film that lightened my mood, the best being what is basically a comedy of manners sketch in a posh restaurant.

On a personal level I think I will be haunted by Tom Hiddleston's performance as Edward, too sensitive for this world, a sad and noble man, who lacks any expression of passion, and misplaces his affection. All the more remarkable given his quite opposite performance as a shallow, obnoxious and cowardly youth in Unrelated.

Lots of good reviews already here, all with good points.

I wanted more, more development, more info, and wondered if the film was overly autobiographical on Joanna's part. Film, for me, is interesting in that it can reflect life, but that only communicates it to others. Really interesting film explores potentials, unknowns, has a resolution, yes. This is not just good storytelling, nor it is audience fetishism - it is respecting the ability of film to be creatively ergonomic, simply put. We watch films to associate, to belong, we do need some feeding, nothing wrong in that. Portraying sadness and dysfunction isn't enough as I see it in film. The medium deserves us to go further. Make a damned story out of it, the reality behind the story will still be there when we think about it. I wasn't sure Cynthia was really acting, which is nothing to shout about, and it's ironic, the best acting I thought was from Christopher, who isn't an actor. Come on, do film making some justice, work it, don't be afraid of it. But I did enjoy it. And it provoked a lot of comments. I am sure if it was that poor, the bad reviewers wouldn't have watched it all. So watch it. It's a positive thing. Liked it.

We start and finish with the star of this film. The helicopter. Otherwise, this is a rather unremarkable soap of a story that sees a family reconvene on the remote Scilly Isles. You just know that when they have all arrived, familial discord will soon be in the air and although the film certainly looks lovely, the subsequent melodrama develops little substance to the characterisations and is chronically middle-class and pedestrian. Tom Hiddleston is a positive drip as "Edward" delivering his overwritten lines to his sister "Cynthia" (Lydia Leonard) who seems only capable of replying in tones of disdain and contempt. The narrative seems bent on contriving scenarios - both past and present - to force the thing and the characters to become interesting. For Joanna Hogg, it seems she is determined to bring some authenticity to this tale of wealthy people enjoying the privileges and pitfalls of their social status - good or bad! Maybe the title has a (not so) hidden meaning about those folks joined by birth but separated by constant personal maelstroms, but for me it is just far too wordy and up itself with far too much - admittedly beautiful - shots of the scenery. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood - but this just wasn't for me.

A fretful Englishwoman joins her fragile adult children at a familiar vacation spot, a guesthouse on Tresco in the Scilly Isles, for a feast of locally caught lobster, locally shot pheasant and painfully awkward smalltalk. There's plenty of drama, but not much plot in the usual sense. My wife and I didn't get much out of Joanna Hogg's latest film, "Exhibition," but this one, from 2010, was weirdly involving from start to finish.

The troubles of this trio of gentlefolk (including Tom Hiddleston, the reason we decided to watch this film in the first place) may not amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world, but the way the camera lingers after a character's left the room or climbed a staircase, the dim interior light, even the birdsong and dreamlike landscapes (from glacial boulders to spiky subtropical palms) all contribute to the atmosphere of tension and expectancy.

The title "Archipelago" might refer to the Scilly Isles (of which there are over a hundred) but also, I'm guessing, to the characters in this film, who are linked by blood and memory but isolated from one another by some pretty rough currents. (There's a big framed photo, "Storm off Tierra del Fuego," hanging over the mantelpiece when they arrive at the guesthouse; it makes them uneasy and they take it down.) Fans of Alan Ayckbourn and Edward Gorey, as well as Vinterberg and Haneke, might want to take a chance on this one. Tom Hiddleston fans might stop to consider whether this wussy, neurotic, self-doubting Tom Hiddleston is the Tom Hiddleston they first fell in love with.