Archipelago

This is not so much a review as an observation that might be listed under 'trivia' 'continuity' or 'deep structure analysis'.

At one heart stopping moment in the action (!) Edward gets close enough to Rosie to pin a poppy onto her breast. As poppies grow around November - the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month ( or just 11/11) and the family holiday we're sharing is apparently in the spring or summer - do we have just a big boob or a clue to something much deeper?

This is a film in which (I suspect) there are no accidents. To get the whole picture we have to begin with the missing picture on the wall. And as we watch this space - and watch it we must as we are offered no other frame of reference, we begin to see, like an emerging after image - the ghost of two absent fathers.

This film is not only worth seeing - it is worth going to see and worth looking at every single bit of thinking inside the frame and especially your own thinking outside the box.

Never have I seen a film scream 'art for art's sake, a kiss and cuddle for god's sake' more hysterically. But not everyone will love its raving simplicity.

BTW No national myths or stereotypes were harmed in the making of this movie.

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.

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.

Archipelago is a most certainly a 'love it or hate it' film which sharply divides opinion. It's not every day you see a film set on the Scillies so it was a must see for me personally. I'd read both good and bad reviews before I saw it so knew largely what to expect and yes, I can understand why many find it difficult and slow with long still takes and angst ridden silences. Agree that the characters are hard to engage with or like and yes it's infuriating and overly pretentious at times.

However, because of, and not in spite of all these things, it ultimately succeeds in its portrayal of a very different type of dysfunctional family and brilliantly conveys the interactive awkwardness between the characters and there's quiet, suppressed comedy in the twaddle they speak.

It generates a unique and almost claustrophobic atmosphere, although being too raw in its lack of script. It's a reminder that wealth and privilege don't necessarily equate to inner happiness - in this case loneliness and bitterness pervade. I felt very slightly on edge throughout. If you have an open mind you will gain much from Archipelago which deserves but probably won't get a wider and more appreciative audience.

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.