I saw this film at the Perth Revelation film festival without knowing much about it beforehand. It is probably also helpful to know before you watch it is that this film contains no dialog at all.
Archeo was an extremely impressive film - but only in some ways. The story basically follows three characters wondering around and trying to survive in a desolate landscape. A woman, a man, and a boy, it's unclear what their relationship is as they interact very strangely, but perhaps they could be a sort of family.
The standout aspect of this film is definitely it's visual style. The cinematography is flawless and really well done. It is set in a post-apocalyptic barren world, and it manages to pull it off very impressively. The cinematography sometimes reminded me of Tarkovsky the way the charterers move around as if their part of a visual painting - for example there is a great scene where water flows very slowly through the cracks of a dried up mud surface animating the whole image while 'the woman' rubs her face and hand through it as if she's painting it. The atmosphere is very low key European-long shot type of style, it's quite dark and relentless, making us feel like voyeurs into this strange world.
But don't expect much of a storyline happening here. I had to think about what frustrated me about this film, and it's simply the lack of progression. Between the start and end of the film, not much has actually happened. Between the three characters we barely have learned anything about them, and they haven't really been through anything interesting or even something to warrant a feature film about. The shots were also lacking progression. I'm a huge fan of long shots but the main problem here is that nothing much happens in the context of these long shots, everything is established in the first few seconds of the shot and the rest is just frustrating because nothing else happens, which means your waiting several minutes for the shot to finish because most of the time nothing else is going to happen, but you really have to watch the film to understand what I mean.
Overall this film is original, and I would recommend it. Everything works on a technical level - the editing, cinematography, music, acting, style, concept - all great work to be proud of. I just wish the storyline was a bit less mundane, especially for such a high-concept film.
***Spoilers below***
I got the idea this film was based sometime in the future, due to the clothes looking factory-made, there is also what I though was the wing of a plane towards the end. Perhaps this film takes place after society has fallen apart and humans have reverted back to our Darwinian instincts, a world where language is no longer used. Perhaps living like this way might be so far removed from modern day humans but it also seems to bring them closer and work as a part of nature.
