Archipelago

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.

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.

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.

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.