Joanna Hogg chases authenticity. Her reluctance to call “Cut,” instead letting a scene’s action carry on via languid takes, static camerawork, and unscripted dialogue, reflects her intuitive sense of how small but telling slips within the typically dull cadences of British upper-middle-class social chatter can reveal roiling undercurrents of feeling. Yet while her debut feature, Unrelated (2007), convincingly sold this illusion of casualness, the visual and narrative rigour that underlies it came to the fore as early as her follow-up, Archipelago (2010). At one point in the latter, members of a family taking an off-season vacation are grouped against the severe blankness of a blue-gray wall, where an almost imperceptible differentiation in colour draws our eyes to a phantom square. The characters, who have holidayed in this house frequently over…
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Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 89 - Winter 2022