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

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

Nahkchivan, did you see Museum Hours?

― Acting Crazy (Instrumental) (jed_), Saturday, February 7, 2015 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Was this based on Bernhard's Old Masters?

Or not based...as its from the pov of the guard but some googling says no although this rev mentions both.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/museum-hours

Yes, watch it!

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.

― sʌxihɔːl (Ward Fowler), Tuesday, 17 February 2015 09:49 (12 hours ago

quite

saw museum hours the other day, very good

That slant review is excellent. And I'm interested in reading that Bernhard too.

i think the non-sex scene in exhibition might be the greatest non-sex scene i've ever seen in a movie. hilarious/horrible is so hard to pull off.

also, i think that house should have been nominated for a best supporting actor oscar.

^^^^^^^^

yes, i'd like to swing by there on a visit

That house gave great stair!

has anyone feigned illness at dinner parties after seeing this?

The snot/snob sister in Archipelago is my favorite recently viewed movie villain.

yes, i'd like to swing by there on a visit

unfortunately, it's now a sainsbury's local

lol

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.