Joanna Hogg, painterly, modernist Brit filmmaker utilizing static frames, uneasy vibes

i'm glad i didn't watch Unrelated first or I wouldn't have gone any further. i thought it was horrible - exactly the film i'd feared Archipelago would be - full of vile supercilious but underdeveloped/weak characters and pretty bog standard visually and narratively.

maybe Exhibition is even better than Archipelago then? i hope so.

hm, see i thought esp for her first film there was a lot to like. shes def cognizant of like ozu & rohmer, particularly w/ the narrative and the scenes that resemble elipses. idk that usu strikes me as p honest & tying in well w/ the flat visuals and minimization of edits, cuts, soundtrack, etc etc;

it actually reminded me of reygadas too, but w/o a spiritual or mysticism element

def piqued to check out the other 2

wow!

SO this was wonderful, huh.
nice to be able to skip back & read everybody grasping at the same thing, too, above; perhaps the thing that makes me feel hogg is so major, isn't out-of-place mentioned alongside the other few most interesting directors working now, is that she's definitely taking new, unfamiliar, non-literal routes to somewhere strangely beautiful and slightly upsetting. finding comparisons is hard but i'm reminded in sensation, if not at all really in content, of the circuitousness of what you see vs what you get in some of denis' films; that we're only seeing people dance but that it connects with something much larger, that it's her way of revealing people. & i think the naturalism here is so revealing, the conversations almost like the tips of icebergs, this maybe the sense in which the films recall haneke, the twin strains of conversation differing according to what's being said & just the mood of the room, the miscommunication felt. it also feels so incredibly luxurious to be afforded so much space, in this, to think, & interpret, what we're shown feeling really judiciously regulated and allowed to just nebulously vibrate against other scenes. did she fall asleep with the shoes still on, & did he see, & is this why he was upset locked in his office, & was there a conversation we didn't have access to? or, just: no; maybe she didn't. we're always having to really watch. & the film really does seem to have a thesis, i think - there's something suffocating and destructive about their organisation, that sex happens so lifelessly & suffers from the space it has been allotted; that the intercom so inelegantly addresses its intended broader function - but this isn't neatly delineated. i think the shots of botanical life existing distinctly outside the apartment were as concrete as it got in positing some actual, direct contrast between urbanity & something more natural, but they felt very open to other perspectives at the same time, another part of the precise fabric of the film.

double bill w/the strange little cat, i think; echoes.

Loved Exhibition.

Missed the others; wanted to see the Tuscan one, but not for vastly different reasons than I wanted to see The Trip to Italy, which probably better fulfilled my vicarious desires.

all 3 are on netflix instant now btw

This thread, and John Waters' Top Ten of 2014, prompted me to watch Archipelago last night. Some of it was painful watching because it so exactly captured moments of British social awkwardness and embarrassment, the restaurant scene in particular - I've been in very similar situations to the hired cook when she's a captive witness to middle class bad behaviour and emotional warfare conducted under cover of good manners and good taste. I also loved the way that Hogg incorporated non-actors with the cast, particularly the painter, whose speech to Hiddleston near the end about creativity was beautiful and inspiring.

Because I've watched quite a lot of Rohmer films recently, I could definitely see the similarities to his work (Ozu not so much), though the comedy in Archipelago is even drier (but still there). At the same time, I thought the film lacked Rohmer's mastery of narrative arrangement and manipulation; while I appreciated Hogg's reticence (especially in the romantic-not romantic encounter between Hiddleston and the cook in the kitchen when he re-arranges the poppy on her shirt), I kind've wanted a little more in the way of story, development, resolution. While I understood the strategy of witholding off-screen characters (the husband, the girlfriend), at times the film seemed to promise moments of conflict and drama that never actually arrived, which felt slightly frustrating (though I'm sure that was the intention.)

Shall definitely see her other films, now.

They're all on disc in the US now for dinosaurs like me.

watched Archipelago last night... immaculate in its way, but a little freeze-dried over the nearly 2 hours? I really couldn't pinpoint the sources of this family's angst beyond a seeming gulf between the parents.

Also Tom Hiddleston and the cook needed to ball at some point.

(btw i was also fatigued in the extreme last night so i may have been a less than ideal viewer)

yea id agree, its tone and composition is nice but the character depth is a little lacking; unrelated is her best imo

Should have that next week

archipelago is a far better and more acute film, the lack of any diegetically obvious rationale for the sister's suppressed rage is exactly the idea that lends a bit of dread and cold blood to it

exhibition goes a bit further with the subtraction, it's a slightly different film language to archipelago and the shift to very pristine hd and more ambiguous lines in interior spaces helps that; she is quite clear about wishing to introduce nonlinearity and dreamlife in one of her interviews (her next film is going to be a period piece set in the 80s)

archipelago is more concerned with disquieted despair, the formal probity of english bourgeois families and the threat within, on these terms it is verging toward greatness; exhibition is more particular in the setting (and the context of housing capital appreciation), the normative bourgeois family form is shifted so there is maybe some more opportunity for escape, although it is admirably unclear about much that works

she gets compared to a lot of people she only tangentially resembles which is a sign of doing something interesting, tempted to suggest assayas thematically in terms of someone plainly curious about the same classes (generic bourgeois / artworld) and lanthimos' dogtooth in terms of threatening dislocated interiors, although clearly a much more abstract sort of horror involved than that

not seeing a lot of deference to the grander predecessors which is welcome (maybe akerman a bit?), as much as she clearly has spent her time with them; rather wish NRQ was still here ready to pour a bit of cold water on all the warm notices given to this rara avis of blighty's film scene

nonlinearity and dreamlife in one of her interviews (her next film is going to be a period piece set in the 80s)

That is a v Akerman-like move, at least as far as introducing 'dreamlife', which is what she did in her 80s musicals.

just saw exhibition

it was very great & utterly beautiful

i've been in lots of kensington houses in my capacities as a tutor & many do indeed feel exhibited, perhaps uncomfortably so. this felt like a crystallisation of (and a slightly weird expansion upon) a sort of slightly repressed, slightly exhibitionistic london affluence

nice
thought you would like it

hesitant to mention this on account of just how it sounds, but: i remember reading an interview with jim jarmusch, from forever ago, where he was asked whether he thought you needed to actually be american to fully comprehend and read cassavetes' films, jarmusch agreeing, that they're just so steeped in micro-dynamic class baggage, playing with behaviours & archetypes that there's a whole language being spoken that other viewers might miss. &, just re:

I really couldn't pinpoint the sources of this family's angst beyond a seeming gulf between the parents.

i remember talking to friends after seeing archipelago about the precision of the discomfort it elicited in me; someone mentioning the scene where they change tables, me just with this dull sense memory recollection of the scenes rendering heavy uncommunicative gulfs between agreeable relatives, it's been forever but say in the scenes with the painter, so redolent of how the air feels in those rooms, those exchanges. angst is just the right word; there's such a resistant force below the surface, too low a frequency to really distinctly identiy, just dragging everyone down, maybe something to do with responsibility or dissatisfaction. i know sober familial events aren't exclusively a british thing but i wonder if the actual dynamics of the mood of the film had a different gravity for people who grew up in the uk.

I really couldn't pinpoint the sources of this family's angst beyond a seeming gulf between the parents.

Did you notice the song over the credits? Written by Hogg and sung by the actress who plays the sister, it's about the sister's love for her brother, how he's braver than she is, how she admires him for it. It helps explain her anger in terms of jealousy, maybe?

Thought Exhibition operated like a slow-motion farce, with a Tati-like appreciation of the silliness of their separation + deep affection for the architecture that separates them.

I watched both of these because of this thread, by the way. She's my favorite new discovery!

Great & surely intentional detail of Exhibition: both principal actors were in their first film acting role ever, both approaching 60

not all that intentional

The budget was less than £1m – her biggest yet. She secured the house for six weeks. But she still had no leading actors.

Panicked, she phoned Viv Albertine for ideas. Still best known as the guitarist in fabled all-girl punk band the Slits, she and Hogg had been friends since 1984. After quitting music, she too made films. Now, she suggested names.

"It was only when I hung up," Hogg says, "that Nick said 'What about Viv?'" She called straight back.

Liam Gillick was only in his late 40s. He's 50 now. Viv Albertine looks really amazing for her age though.

that song was written by Hogg and Viv Albertine, i think? i did notice it. xxxp

rewatched Exhibition; liked the way her 'codependency' w/ the house was explicit w/out ever being diagnosed. V.A. (the ex-Slit) is this year's Mary Margaret O'Hara.

i would agree that Archipelago seems more inherently, inescapably British.

MMO'H was astonishing in Museum Hours. Imago should see that if he hasn't.

I liked Archipelago a lot, thought Unrelated was not good. Exhibition was interesting but didn't really hang together for me. I really liked the scene where Liam G has an argument with the builder who was parked in front of his house.

yeah

Nahkchivan, did you see Museum Hours?

no i just wikid it after you mentioned it, i was only vaguely aware of it

how much of it is in german? if its only a small bit i might try muddling through sans subtitles with my gcse german

hardly any of it. it's probably my favourite film of the past few years.

cool, i shall watch it

i started watching exhibition last night but i had to watch on my computer because maria wouldn't stop playing her zombie game. gonna watch the whole thing tonight or soon on the t.v. i really liked the ambient sounds from the street in the scenes where she is alone in her office room. i also like how the use of silence is completely different from the use of silence in that stray dogs movie i've been watching all week. silence is never the same! i do like seeing movies that remind me of why i like movies. or why i liked movies in the past. it's encouraging.

Joannna: painterly, modernish, Brit

you shd watch exhibition!

archipelago to follow soon

been dragging my heels on hogg catchup since ward bumped this thread in early december. what should i start with?

nakhers stanned for the last two. reverse chronological order seems as good as any order tbh

will watch museum hours too, ty for the recommendation

reverse chronological order

― pro war Toby Keith songs would rub you the wrong way (imago), Sunday, 8 February 2015 02:37 (14 minutes ago)

What a brilliant film Exhibition is, comical but quietly devastating. Thought the two leads were excellent, both conveying this weird blank anxiety.

I just read Viv Albertine's bio (which is great btw)

the first time she met Liam Gillick they had a massive argument and he ended up quitting the film and told her "you're not intelligent enough to play my wife"

jesus

Haha. He's clearly playing himself throughout, but he's good at it.

I arrive at the location at 8 p.m. with all my bags, an assistant helps me unload the taxi and then leaves me and Liam alone. Tomorrow we start filming. I’m going to stay the night in someone else’s empty house, with a man I just met. How weird. He suggests we go to the pub. We sit outside under an electric heater and discuss life, art, having children. As we talk, I realise that an old friend of mine went to Goldsmiths art school with him. I text her to ask what he was like. She texts back: VERY ambitious. Meanwhile Liam is telling me what a lovely big cuddly socialist he is. I don’t care that he’s ambitious, lives in a fancy penthouse and has round-the-clock nannies for his child, I just think it’s funny. I start to I arrive at the location at 8 p.m. with all my bags, an assistant helps me unload the taxi and then leaves me and Liam alone. Tomorrow we start filming. I’m going to stay the night in someone else’s empty house, with a man I just met. How weird. He suggests we go to the pub. We sit outside under an electric heater and discuss life, art, having children. As we talk, I realise that an old friend of mine went to Goldsmiths art school with him. I text her to ask what he was like. She texts back: VERY ambitious. Meanwhile Liam is telling me what a lovely big cuddly socialist he is. I don’t care that he’s ambitious, lives in a fancy penthouse and has round-the-clock nannies for his child, I just think it’s funny. I start to tease him about it but he explodes.
He’s not at all amused. I think I’m being quite flirty calling him a Thatcher’s child and a careerist. (I have been off the dating scene for seventeen years.) I thought we’d got to a place during the evening where we could say stuff like that to each other, wind each other up with a smile, but I’ve hit a raw nerve. He goes mental, jumps up off the bench, practically turns over the table, grabs his (designer) coat – face bulldog angry and red, chest puffed out – and says he’s not doing the film, it’s not going to work, he’s going to pack his bags and fuck off back to New York.

As I watch Liam scurry off up the street in a huff, my mouth in an O shape, I dimly recall Joanna saying something like ‘Be gentle with him’ the last time I saw her. She knows me only too well. I’d better sort this out or the film isn’t going to happen. I run after Liam and try to placate him; I explain that I was only teasing and I really like him. I put my hand on his arm, he shakes it off like I’m a leper and hisses, ‘Don’t touch me.’ He looks disgusted by me. Wow. I go back to the house and watch him pack. He’s still snarling and hissing, ‘You’re not smart enough to play my wife,’ and, ‘You’re lazy and unprofessional.’ (Because I haven’t Googled him yet.) ‘I don’t want to be in this bourgeois film anyway.’ It seems to matter very much to him how he is perceived in the ‘art world’. On and on he rants. I give up trying to pacify him and say, ‘I understand if you think the film’s not right for you and I’m not the right person to play your wife, you have to do what’s best for you and your image.’ His expression softens, he stops packing, says he’s not going to leave the film after all, he’s going back to the pub and he’ll see me later.

#0

I could have watched the shot of D at the front of the bus for the full hour and a half btw.

It's like TS Eliot's A Cooking Egg in cinematic form.

sold

I thought Exhibition was striking, in a muted way. (Can something be mutedly striking?) Want to see the others.

and distinctly un-British, closer to Taiwanese cinema.

For sure. Some midpoint between Hou and Haneke.

and distinctly un-British

There are lots of things in Hogg's style that connect her to earlier British avant-garde filmmakers like Laura Mulvey and Sally Potter, without even addressing the distinctly British concerns - class, social hierarchy - that are embedded in the films themselves.

I was thinking of the tradition of late twentieth century loquacious British cinema, but Potter's a good call.

yeah there are all kinds of Brit cinema no matter what Eric H sez

Her love for that heroin-addicted Tory counts as struggle, no? And in the second film she wants the mostly male milieu to take her film seriously.

I should add that I really like the Hogg films I've seen. And you can certainly read a class critique into them, most people will, but it seems Hogg herself doesn't really. I saw her first one, Unrelated, the other day, which definitely reads like a critique of a bunch of arrogant upper class Brits being unpleasant to each other and the Italian locals - but reading interviews with Hogg, she says it's not the way she sees it, she's simply focused on the travails of the 40something protagonist.

As for the Souvenirs, I like them for a lot of the reasons Alfred mentions. But I did find Julie's extreme privilege - which is way more than your average white middle class privilege - is something I needed to get past mentally before enjoying the film. It's not the same as Austen or Shakespeare, whose worlds are temporally and psychologically far removed from our own. Hogg is recreating a world that is pretty much the same as our own and in the lived experience of many, and then asks us to care about someone who has extraordinary and very untypical resources at her disposal to deal with her (very real) tragedy. That doesn't make the films bad, but it certainly begs questions.

I haven't seen part 1, maybe I should. Don't think her struggle to get the film taken seriously was so much about the industry men (aside from a couple of scenes of course) but about her inability to communicate with her crew/classmates, which is something I could have been interested in, but it never really seemed to be dealt with.

i don't think this film would make a lick of sense if you hadn't seen part 1.

Good post, Zelda.

Camaraderie, I'd say Richard Ayoade's Patrick is there to give Julie the necessary tension: gay and Black, certainly not privileged.

I always like Richard Ayoade, and enjoyed his scenes, would have liked a lot more of him in there.

Should note that Jane Austin did not write a book about a young female writer from immense privilege trying to write a book and get it published with funding from her parents.

But Austen, who lived at home, did write a novel about young rich people putting on a play!

I agree, though, her world is sci-fi to us.

I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm) at 10:42 27 Dec 22

i don't think this film would make a lick of sense if you hadn't seen part 1.

lol I hear ya

saw the eternal daughter. it was a lot of tilda swinton. a lot. too much really. and the pitch of the neurosis. again too much. tiring.

BUT there was a sort of howling mystery around it all that also gave it power. and it's just great to see someone making a film that references turn of the screw henry james (both the original story and the innocents), and They by Kipling is explicitly quoted, as it were. this is exactly in that mode, the psychological dominating the gothic. the haunting also v evident. the hotel receptionist is *amazing* as is Louis the dog.

Joanna Hogg's treatment of light, sound, weather, interiors and dress is masterly, just wonderful. it won't be a film to see on tv, where I suspect it will be too dark. it was very good to see, generally, the bedroom scenes properly grainy (it used to drive my parents mad that in most films when someone switched out the light, the bedroom suddenly became lighter than when it had been on. a necessary mechanic perhaps, but Hogg really works at the light levels.

it might in one reading be seen as a reverse turn of the screw/they tbh.

also, when someone else sees this - post here if you find it reasonable to say the shining is both an oblique but also obvious and slightly “wut?” reference point.

hi!

: )

so, i mean im not sure if im being weird about this but the deployment of *kindly black man as hotel caretaker* was both hilariously obvious and also made me go “wait, what? why?”

I mentioned The Shining in my review, but thought this was kind of creaky tbh. Particularly the kindly old black guy’s eerie flute habit. Would make a good double bill with All Of Us Strangers though.

Creaky or total mess is what I've been circling around. But I quite *enjoyed* that it was trying to do a lot and especially that it was working in the gothic frame to test the deterioration of uppper middle class neurosis and grief, plugging in and reversing the children-as-revenants on guilt ridden parents. Although sometimes it felt like it all landed on the pastiche, with major concerns (death, ghosts) in service of the minor (manners).

It reminded me a bit of my reaction to Jen Calleja's novel Vehicle. I didn't think it was very good, at all really, but I was pleased that it existed and people were doing things in this vein, playing with the possibilities. What's the line from Annie Dillard? "The writer knows his field - what has been done, what could be done, the limits - the way a tennis player knows the court. ANd like that expert, he, too, plays the edges. That is where the exhilaration is. He hits up the edges. In writing, he can push the edges. Beyond this limit, here, the reader must recoil."

I think this film is probably in that latter space, but i'm pleased someone is testing the edges of it.

Still too much Tilda, even if the editing was impressive.

the "two parts Hammer, one part Tales of the Unexpected" headline quote from Graun makes this sound appealing to me but somehow I don't think it will be an accurate summation of a J Hogg movie

yeah, that's incorrect! the performance of Carly-Sophia Davies as the hotel receptionist is worth the admission price alone though!

In a strong month for dogs in movies (the mutts in Fallen Leaves and Anatomy of a Fall are v good too), Tilda’s springer spaniel may be the best.

iirc Kaurismaki was a good director of woofers in the other side of hope as well

have been quietly stewing all afternoon over the level of critical idiocy reflected in that guardian quote, calz.

I haven't seen the movie yet but I thought that either is an absolute clunker of a headline quote or a radical departure for J Hogg, the former being the odds on fav!

Upthread I called it her slightest film, but I think of it a little more kindly now. It's audacious to do the third part of an autobiographical trilogy as a gothic ghost story, and it pays off nicely at the end.

The privilege discussion upthread puts me in mind of Sofia Coppola, who I think has a similarly ambiguous posture toward her privilege and the world she occupies.

Mentions of 'Hammer Horror' are almost always a sign of critical carelessness, especially in the Guardian.

my bf was so infuriated by an interview with tilda swinton's daughter that he now refuses to watch any movies by j hogg

Lol, got a link?

I read a graun interview with HSB and was bristling a fair bit at the smugness and nepo-brat quotient and all the usual shit (private school education, idyllic country house) but lol, despite this I'd still watch a Hogg movie!

This film added up to less than the sum of its parts, other than the aforementioned Carly-Sophia Davies. Maybe it needed more heaving bosoms, if it is indeed "two parts Hammer"?

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Tilda seemed to be cured of her psychotic episode quite sharpish at the conclusion!

I think this was it: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/23/honor-swinton-byrne-interview-souvenir-tilda-joanna-hogg

"“From what I understand, she couldn’t find Julie in these posey professional actresses who were very comfortable in front of a camera. She just said they’re all too pretty. And then she cast me. Which, you know, I took as a compliment,” says Swinton Byrne. She lets out a throaty laugh, wriggles her feet out of a pair of sparkly stilettos and snuggles herself more comfortably into a sofa at the upmarket central London hotel that is the base for her first solo publicity round, for the sequel to that first film."

Yer faither wid be proud

that quote nails it!

idk I like the sass. American actors are reluctant to show it.

Thanks for that link plax, understand your bf's reaction.

This film added up to less than the sum of its parts, other than the aforementioned Carly-Sophia Davies. Maybe it needed more heaving bosoms, if it is indeed "two parts Hammer"?

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Tilda seemed to be cured of her psychotic episode quite sharpish at the conclusion!

Great comment.. Did the film need that malevolent detachment? Is that mode even Hogg's specialty?

right. it’s an interesting decision. i like that she tried it. not sure it worked.