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

Watching this tonight after catching up with Archipelago and Exhibition on MUBI.

this was very exciting for an hour but the second half is significantly less interesting. my showing was preceded by an interview with JH in which she complained that her films are always judged through the prism of class but that class was "something she just wasn't very interested in" (!) i felt like shouting out "easy for you to say!"
Tom Burke is amazing in this. he really knows how to smoke on camera.
― Funky Isolations (jed_), Sunday, 1 September 2019 bookmarkflaglink

Like yeah definitely but it is a misrepresentation of her work if people are saying class is an interest for her because it plainly is not. She is basically making films about the kind of people she knows. The one time it does come in is the cook in Archipelago, but its a bit like Francoise in Proust, it has a character that is shown to be smart, something more (when she notices there was no painting in the room anymore and it certainly interacts with the guests - but class relations are done in a very short space of time) but it functions as a bit of relief to the goings on in the family's quiet cruelty to one another (this is a bit rough actually the cook is trapped a bit more in the goings on than I am making it sound, but the film doesn't spend a lot of time on this).

I think Duras' films were quite important for her in that respect. That way of observing people confined to a particular space except she makes the space seem incredibly attractive (Duras's spaces referred at times to a colonial past) at first, then as time goes on we see people in their own together -- and how spaces can enable that. It is barely about making people into something film-like in its attractiveness (British realism in a European style is quite a fusion I hadn't quite seen many Brit filmmakers pull off with such ease), her way of filming just allows them to be whatever they'd like to be -- a very striking quality when looking at Viv Albertine.

it's useful for me to see that lack of interest made explicit by her because it might be what keeps her stuff strictly at arm's length for me

oooh the Françoise analogy's a good 'un.

Hogg has put together a book documenting the Chantal Akerman screenings from a couple of years ago. Attending the event on the 24th.

https://mailchi.mp/a2c6b615bffd/a-nos-amours-chantal-akerman-book-screenings-1606117

This felt like a proper film in comparison to her previous efforts -- actual music in it and more than a couple of locations and more populated, even if you still have a cool flat and the whole centred around two people with a third or fourth character (in this case the mother) and I think this:

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 bookmarkflaglink

Is very well put in reagrds to the earlier films, and now she has become even more open as to how priviledged she has been (with the one line challenge (the 'flat in Knightsbridge' crack) by her tutor). I can't remember a film where a knife is really taken to the filmmaker's own posiiton.

And yes (also as Ward points it out) a very interesting contrast to the Almodovar, even if the class position is different there is a common thread of pain, discovery...you still have to become a person. To learn and be open and generous enough to show yourself on film years later like this, both the good and the bad, and in these two films you see that.

Overall I liked how she baked in some of the ways she shoots and does character into this more straightforward narrative. Also progresses her own reflections on female creativity in a very male environment from Exhibiton.

Shame schlump has left, would like to read a post rn on this.

"knife to your own position" is essentially just maaturbation at her level of success and connection, is my issue

The problem is that she doesn't come across as self-contragulatory, and its nowhere near a sympathetic portrait. At that point she isn't a success in that film school, nor that interesting, doesn't have many friends (that are shown). But she does portray how it is -- that she needed mummy's money, the bad decisions. There is a vague Proustian project to portray this not-that-much of a person who somehow ends up producing worthwhile art. The thing is you have to show yourself in all that ugliness (connections, priviledge, whatever), like its part of a bargain.

(I wouldn't even say she is much of a success now, beyond the films she makes she isn't a recognised name here beyond art house circles.)

"knife to your own position" is essentially just maaturbation at her level of success and connection, is my issue

― Simon H.

dude really

sorry Comrade Simon, i'm with Sotosyn here :)

I just saw this and really enjoyed it. I'm not much of a film expert or critic, so my comments may be dumb, but:

I wasn't sure about the first half hour. I found it difficult to follow and a little boring. Slowly however, just like Julie, I got sucked into the relationship and the film. Reading the upthread Hogg's comments that she is uninterested in class seems crazy, because I thought the film to be saturated in class (albeit mostly of the middle/upper middle kind). There is so much else there was well: a kind of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Wo(man), but cut off before she articulates or reaches her own aesthetic vision, except maybe the film you are watching is it.

Both the leads were just fantastic. His character is tough to pull off and maybe he doesn't because I didn't see what she liked about him. I just chalked it up to her being so shy/withdrawn that she felt he was good enough or deserved it. I don't know.

Most interesting part for me was the camera. There were a couple of panning/moving camera shots at the opening party and again near the end, but most of the shots were frozen shots of single rooms with the actors moving through the shot. That scene near the end where we are watching Julie watching the filming of her student project was amazing - the camera moves slightly to lock in on her face as her fellow students move past her for a zoom shot on the film within a film. And then she turns to look at the camera. Loved it.

well, I guess Hogg writes what she knows

and she basically only knows upper-middle-class twats

Good on her!

I liked the film curation stuff she's done in London but her films are far less interesting than those by the filmmakers she admires.

Student thesis film Caprice streaming here until Friday. Very early Tilda Swinton appearance (billed as "Matilda Swinton," in fact).
https://www.lecinemaclub.com/now-showing/caprice/

Can't wait to watch The Souvenir sequel.

She opened up splendidly. Almost the match of its predecessor. The only long film about a female director discovering her talent?

Intrigued!

Just watched Souvenir II last night, I thought it was great! Maybe her best? Her most formally inventive anyway. Of course, I’m a sucker for meta-movies about moviemaking. This one reminded me in parts of Mulholland Drive and Cocteau’s Testament of Orpheus, even though it’s not nearly as overt in its methods as either.

I was tempted to name it my favorite film of 2021 but Hogg already took the 2019 honors.

I liked how it wasn't "just" a sequel but a different approach entirely — like a retelling in a way of part I, or a telling of how she (personally/artistically) processed the trauma of part I. And how she developed as an artist at the same time. Plus, like the first part, a great example of how to do a period piece that really inhabits its time without being showy about it.

The details, details: Swinton's Rosalind, still crushing on Tony, nursing her conspiracy theories about his death; Richard Ayoade as Patrick; denying the audience a climax.

I've been trying to explain to people offline what makes Hogg's films so damn special.

Hard to describe for sure. I get why some people don't respond to her, she makes you work and pay attention. But I think she's great.

Finally saw Souvenir Part II last night. Really great. The people who couldn't wrap their heads around why they were a couple in part I probably won't see this one, where they delve into what she got from the relationship.

Such a rich and, as it stands now, underappreciated pair of films.

New one out soon

I have requested Unrelated. I hope it is good.

Loved the Souvenir films. Really meticulous recreation of a time and place (not that I was there to judge).

Just saw The Eternal Daughter, which I think is both her slightest film to date and also very good and totally worth seeing. Tilda Swinton is predictably great in the lead dual roles, and Hogg has some fun with ghost story tropes. I almost feel bad saying it’s her slightest, because it’s a heartfelt film about her relationship with her mother. But in form at least it’s her most conventional (even though it tweaks its conventions).

Yeah – filing this under “good but inessential”. Would have worked just as well or better as a 30min short or part of an anthology. I read an interview with Hogg and found out she’s been working on the script on & off since 2008 – surprising, since theres so little going on under the hood.

Still, not unenjoyable - I liked the Mario Bava lighting, and the actress playing the snippy hotel clerk made me laugh several times. Wish I’d caught it in a theater to better experience all that ominous sound design. But pretty skippable imo when all is said & done.

Technically a Christmas movie though fwiw

Watching this tonight.

I know what tipsy means about this as her 'slightest' film, but it's impossible to watch -- appreciate -- without realizing it's the final chapter to The Souvenir. I hadn't reckoned with the degree to which Julie and Rosalind have the usual fraught mother-daughter relations; this film gets at the brittle politeness, empty courtesies, and genuine consolations in these relations about as mercilessly as I've seen.

I'm not sure the Shining/Turn of the Screw allusions cohere into an adequate ghost story.

Swinton is remarkable. Kudos to Carly-Sophia Davies for her comic turn as the receptionist.

I appreciated her tinkering with the horror tropes and I think it was an interesting approach to the story. But I also kind of feel like it trapped her narratively. Still very affecting. Tilda Swinton is so good.

loved this, there's very much here. "that's what rooms do," etc. (felt closest to Exhibition in some ways)

would make a good sound-identification double feature with Memoria

also I was so nervous through most of it, the tropes got me

watched The Eternal Daughter and liked it so much I finally watched the Souvenir and liked that so much, I did part 2, all in one night.

hi!

I finally got round to Souvenir II and thought it was better and intellectually richer than the first. It does annoy me, though, to hear Hogg say in all her interviews that her movies aren't about class - I mean, maybe they aren't to her, but she must see they're going to be to just about anyone else watching them. The first hurdle to jump for anyone watching either of the Souvenirs is why should I sympathise with someone who seems to have been given everything, who while studying in London is not sharing a grotty basement bedsit in Camberwell (as I was) but a spacious, airy apartment in Knightsbridge. And who can casually ask her Mum for 10,000 pounds to finish her school project - in the mid-80s that would have been the average annual household income! She's working through the terrible thing that happened to her - but with resources even the relatively well off can only dream of.

Never listen to/read artists talk about anything except mixology.

The first hurdle to jump for anyone watching either of the Souvenirs is why should I sympathise with someone who seems to have been given everything, who while studying in London is not sharing a grotty basement bedsit in Camberwell (as I was)

I guess I don't need every cinematic experience or story to be a reflection of my own life in order to find something to enjoy about it. Note that I also like things like Jane Austen adaptations, and Shakespeare plays about Princes and Kings.

I'm still baffled by those comments.

i was pleased to see "Julie" in the Eternal Daughter wearing a dress to the birthday party with the same pattern as one she'd worn at a birthday party in the Souvenir (can't remember if it was in the first or second one)

i get zelda zonk's post and think it's a valid response, clearly stated, don't see what's baffling about it at all, although to be fair i haven't seen the film. that kind of class conscious response to contemporary art is more useful than most criticism i see. i also think akm's rebuttal is a poor one generally speaking but also specifically for the analogies of jane austen and shakespeare. just had to say all that for the record lol.

it's bizarre to say the 'first hurdle for anyone is to get over this issue that I have personally have', to me anyway. it's clearly not the first hurdle, or any kind of hurdle at all, for many people.

so class consciousness is a personal issue hmmm

I believe I've already run up against these issues with you in some other threads and my take is that this is not the only, or primary, metric against which the value of art should be measured.

I wasn't baffled by Zelda Zonk's post -- I was baffled by the criticism upthread posted a couple years ago, which I reread this morning.

I think it's an informative frame in thinking about art but doesn't have to be a dominant one. (Vaguely reminds me of some early response to Taylor Swift on ILM, basically "Who cares what a privileged affluent white girl thinks about anything?")

Hogg is certainly a chronicler of affluence and not a terribly critical one, at least in the sense that her critiques aren't of affluence per se. Though you could certainly argue that in her movies characters mostly use their privilege to try to hide from unhappiness/insecurities/alienation, and generally fail.

I guess I'm pretty taken with Hogg's by now three-part project: it's rare to see so many hours of film by a female writer-director about a budding female writer-director. I'll concede that we can't wave aside the class consciousness: who's paying the bills, who gets their project approved. I thought of Leonard Woolf giving Virginia money for her pens and paper. Her artistry and often her sanity depended on the small genuine kindnesses of a man, a lesser writer. She also inherited iirc some of her dad's $$ too. How a particular kind of 20th century female voice shaped by where they stood in the class structure and how much they got from male patrons strikes me as one of the Hogg Project's overtones.