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.

I'm not sure why this film was made. I don't see the point. I felt no empathy with, or interest in, any of the characters - because we never learnt anything about any of them during the course of this seemingly endless account of a familys' holiday to a desolate, rock strewn island.

The conversation is tedious and I couldn't imagine spending more than an hour with any one of them without wanting to hurl myself off one of the many available cliffs.

The script, if there ever was one, is clumsy and lumbering. The shots of the views are lingering and trail after the characters as they wander up a hill, or down a hill, or along a coast, or gape at a shellfish or gaze at shellfish cooking. At one point it was pointed out that shellfish cooking by a particular method fall into a coma ... I know how they felt.

Do people like this really exist ? I sincerely hope not.

Few films in recent years have polarised audiences and critics quite as much as Archipelago, Joanna Hogg's follow-up to her much-lauded debut Unrelated. If the critics have had near-universal raptures over its long, very long, static wide-shots and natural murk, for many audiences it's simply the Emperor's new fashion range – arse-achingly pretentious art-twaddle.

Well, I say it's great: a superbly photographed, acidly funny dissection of class snobbery and familial dysfunction en vacance, where invisible elephants stampede through the guest rooms, and every infinitesimal gesture counts.

The characterisation is spot on, from Hiddleston's painfully wet young man to his moist-eyed mother, filling the watery void of her life with watercolour lessons. Easy targets perhaps, but less fish in barrels and more akin to the lobsters their poor holiday cook prepares: seemingly inert, then writhing in silent agony as Hogg turns up the heat.

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.

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.