THE TITLE has both metaphorical and literal meanings. Archipelago, the latest film from Joanna Hogg, director of the abrasive Unrelated, is, indeed, set in the Scilly Islands. But Hogg is also alerting us to the ways in which the characters, despite their close family ties, remain emotionally isolated from one another. We are together, but we are alone.
Enthusiasts for Unrelatedwill have some idea what to expect. As in that film, the story hangs around a group of middle-class people enduring a perfectly ghastly holiday. Patricia (Kate Fahy), the oppressed mater familias, desperately attempts to engineer a degree of warmth and good will. Cynthia (Lydia Leonard), her inexplicably neurotic daughter, picks fights with any human being unfortunate enough to enter her gaze. Edward (Tom Hiddleston), Patricia's decent but psychologically woolly son, prepares for a trip to Africa working with Aids patients. Meanwhile, on the mainland, an unloved and unseen dad keeps his distance. One can hardly blame him.
Whereas Unrelatedwas something of a slow-burner, Archipelago barely reaches even damp ignition. This is not meant as criticism. The sense of brooding, barely explained tension seems all the more suffocating for never quite bursting above ground. The most furious arguments occur on the telephone – only one voice audible – or, vaguely comprehensible, on the other side of thick English west- country walls.
Referencing the paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi, Hogg ramps up the dread by shooting interiors in a sepulchral darkness that turns blazing window views into animated picture postcards. The urge to escape the house and savour the greenery is frequently overpowering.
For all Hogg’s skill, however, the impenetrability of her characters is ultimately somewhat frustrating. At home to Bergmanesque ambiguity, she surely would welcome the fact that we don’t know quite what to make of the painter, a friend of Patricia’s, who occasionally pops up to deliver florid, pretentious meditations on life, the universe and everything. Still, Hogg can’t have meant him to come across as such an unmitigated poltroon.
It is certainly an achievement to create this degree of psychological fug. We could, however, cope with a little more illumination from Hogg’s next opus.
