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

I know schlump has seen and admired (possibly all three of) her films. I saw Exhibition last night and was fairly riveted for reasons I can't quite nail down. Her oeuvre is running at Linc Ctr in NY thru Thursday. Links:

http://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-joanna-hogg-filmlinc

the one set in tuscany is alright
the dvd looks like shit though and its not the sort of film-language that rewards looking like something filmed on an iphone 3g

Exhibition looks better than that. Also, stars a Slit.

and obviously, Tom Hiddleston rowrrrr

I watched Archipelago purely off the back of this thread and slightly expecting (from the trailer) a pretty standard portrayal of the quiddities (TM) of middle class English manners. I was absolutely blown away and also, like Morbs, "riveted for reasons I can't quite nail down". Absolutely singular and exciting. I found it strangely beautiful and slightly upsetting. I cannot shake it. It's like TS Eliot's A Cooking Egg in cinematic form.

Where are the eagles and the trumpets?

Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps.
Over buttered scones and crumpets
Weeping, weeping multitudes
Droop in a hundred A.B.C.'s

i kept thinking of tarkovsky as well. of course it's a different register but there's something tarkovskyan there, no? certainly more than haneke which similarity several reviews have trumpeted. it seems off the mark to me and i'm a haneke fan.

similarly off the mark: the mike leigh references in the reviews.

i mean obviously i understand the mike leigh references but they're not right.

can't really get into this thread yet, & waiting for exhibition to show here, but i think the value to a mike leigh comparison would just be in hogg effectively translating class to screen, presenting the dynamics of it, mostly implicitly, with exactitude. everybody i know who saw archipelago had the exact same experience as jed, above; there was an ad for it on the back of S&S, tim hiddleston's face seeming to promise a particular kind of respectful & tepid bourgie drama, & just nothing prepares you for the sharpness. like the most innocuous exchanges occur & uncover voids.

its not the sort of film-language that rewards looking like something filmed on an iphone 3g

don't totally follow this, but i am convinced that some of what was uncanny, in archipelago at least, was the verisimilitude of just drably, digitally shot interiors, bland beige hallway carpeting, holiday home flatness.

caught Archipelago entirely by accident on TV a few months back and was sucked right in. also thought at first that it was "about" class but there's something more interesting happening, Hogg doesn't seem interested in the kind of skewering of caricatures that Mike Leigh often goes for

the one set in tuscany is alright
the dvd looks like shit though and its not the sort of film-language that rewards looking like something filmed on an iphone 3g

― Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (nakhchivan), Monday, June 30, 2014 3:36 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea i watched this one, p good. idk jack abt cameras but i think she said it was filmed on a sony zed1 that pixelates often when panning

some FC coverage

http://www.filmcomment.com/entry/interview-joanna-hogg

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/joanna-hogg-exhibition

She is also part of this collective:

http://www.anosamours.co.uk/

Know of it because they have been putting a season of Chantal Akerman films. I didn't join the dots so wasn't aware she was presenting these..

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

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

sequel imo

fuck me, archipelago might be even better

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 (3 weeks ago)

have you seen 'riddles of the sphinx'

fuck me, archipelago might be even better

― vacuum head tree disease (imago)

thx for the dn

have you seen 'riddles of the sphinx'

Yeah, I've got the BFI blu - thought the 'performance' sequence in Exhibition was especially similar to the acrobatic sequence in Sphinx, and that both films used a long take aesthetic to explore gendered domestic spaces

no, Archipelago is not better

https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/Online/default.asp?BOparam::WScontent::loadArticle::permalink=cinemabornagain

Laura Mulvey talk on the 21st April. Seen her speak in discussions before, she is awesome.

Have now seen Museum Hours - it's astonishing and the two protagonists are superb characters (also, the visiting lecturer bit is great) - could listen to Johann opine on art and its spectators for hours

a beautiful well-composed conjecture on art, survival and the search for context with one of the lightest dramatic touches I've seen - it felt accidental at times, as if a documentary, even though it was clearly complex and thought-out

makes me want to spend more time in art galleries, which will have pleased the person I watched it with

excellent!

yeah ty! even more amazing is that it was a debut feature film (i think) by an admittedly seasoned documentarian & music video maker

it felt accidental at times

^ lovely

I'm really glad you watched Museum Hours. It's a small project of mine to get people to watch it -very pleased! When MMO'H sings alone in her room "there is a crying in my heart..." - tears every time.

I've watched the whole thing 4 times I think.

it felt accidental at times

I think this is key, really. The whole thing is about how accidental, or incidental, things shape our lives. Chance encounters lead to deep experiences etc. so beautiful. Deft.

loved archipelago, thought exhibition was far more predictable, less interesting, and more prone to art house cliche, and also just had far less sympathetic characters. but her films are more notable for the milieu they feature and how she brings european arthouse style/formalism to middle class britishness than for anything all that stylistically novel. though i do love her.

http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/learn/jem-cohen-compass-magnet/

^screening on Thursday with director.

Come back from Museum Hours. Really set up a unique tension between a documentary and this quietly powerful encounter between two people - a spinning plates trick and Cohen pulled it off as both elements were really satisfying while being almost their own separate thing. Like how Cohen took a risk by switching off the developing relationship between the Johann and Anne to then wander off to the city, around the museum and a few monologues, before then returning to that relationship -- just when you thought he wouldn't. The delay kept me on edge.

A couple of things rang false: surely the guard would've known about the punk kid's arguments against art and museums? After all, he witnesses the gallery guide's (in his favourite Bruegel room) Berger-esque Q&A with the tourists. Plus he surely would've witnessed enough dumb remarks like this in his time touring with rock bands? Additionally, there is something unsatisfying about the family member in a coma as a device for Anne to come and then stay in Vienna for as long as she has. I know you needed something to light a match, some spark so that the act of kindness could be bought out into the open -- and while this was as powerful a moment there could've been another way? Also the nudity was unnecessary, empty surrealism.

I liked the monologues a lot though -- in complete contrast to Old Masters where the guard doesn't have an independent voice. And I loved his voice, the script and delivery were near perfect (although I would've liked the last monologue to have been spoken in German as well.) In my wanders in museums I often wander what the guard thinks of what's going on, what this might be for. Haven't we all? And even if you didn't then surely museum trips won't quite be the same..also liked the conflict with tech. Cohen doesn't put too heavy a judgement either way on earphone commentary, or does he? He sure locks in to the man pulling the mobile phone out during the tour guide's talk.

that's a very good review

did jemmy lad say anything revealing afterwards

Cohen just gave an intro.

johann's voice was probably my favourite thing about the film tbh

Mary Margaret O'Hara was singing a bit though. Still got it.

Hey, I didn't realise that Hogg was joining Laura Mulvey at the BFI 'visual pleasure' panel

Only about 5 seats left!

Just watched Archipelago. I would love to see her movies on a big screen. Her composition is fantastic, but the quiet tones she likes get dulled out on a small screen. Even so, a gorgeous movie. Something I didn't realize to the end was the way the camera moved in closer to the characters over the course of the movie. At the beginning it's all medium to long shots, and body parts but no faces. So that by the time you can really see them close up, you already know them.

http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/news/filmmaker-residence-joanna-hogg

cantabs ppl get to 'go the whole hogg' :)

Yeah I couldn't make the majority of the screenings as I'm just too swamped atm but I'm gonna try to get to Exhibition (+Q&A) tonight and maybe the early shorts if I get enough work done/think I can stay awake

Think I would've preferred her version of High Rise

had no idea abt her film w tilda.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/souvenir-review-arch-dramatist-joanna-hogg-returns-home-personal/

getting a ton of raves/coverage before its US opening next week, Honor Swinton Byrne 's performance in particular

https://www.filmcomment.com/article/i-know-where-im-going/

WTF, not opening in the UK until August??

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/may/15/the-souvenir-joanna-hogg-humanises-middle-class-problems?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook&fbclid=IwAR2IfaRsDcxO_9u7u4DZJwzIBE0XHHSYglx-jSIQtGaS6_RfqNEF0TssfMA

Yeah!

Hogg has written that one of her inspirations is Roberto Rossellini’s Journey to Italy, saying, “I strive to create this degree of aliveness. I need to see this film often to understand what it is I am trying to do.” Most of our time in life is not spent in dramatic standoffs and cathartic breakdowns. Most of the time we are cooking and eating, taking walks, making phone calls, having deep conversations (or shallow), having sex, having arguments. Hogg clearly has a plan and knows what she wants to create, but within that plan she allows for extraordinary freedom. Perhaps the limits she imposes, by proceeding in chronological order, by keeping the camera in doorways or on the far side of a room, encourages the exhilarating sense of “aliveness” felt in Unrelated, Archipelago, Exhibition, and The Souvenir. Helle le Fevre has edited all of Hogg’s features, and her contribution is essential.

Superb Rebecca Mead feature.

No idea she directed the second (and bigger) of the videos for Johnny Hates Jazz's "Shattered Dreams."

👍

might go see this today, did we like it?

did like her previous stuff, mostly & found the background/build up articles intriguing but i could not get into this idk i felt like its a level of self-involvement too far & that somehow feels magnified by it being undramatic, etc

No idea she directed the second (and bigger) of the videos for Johnny Hates Jazz's "Shattered Dreams."

― recriminations from the nitpicking woke (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, May 19, 2019 12:59 PM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

WHATTTT

yep

There's just something about the fact that the mother is played by Tilda Swinton and the daughter is played by Tilda Swinton's daughter that gets my back up. I know we are so used to this horrendous nepotism in the UK, maybe elsewhere, that we become inured to it and I also know that there exist think-pieces about how it's all perfectly normal and makes sense within the world she's portraying etc. but that makes it worse. She's a decent filmmaker with a singular vision who's made one good film so far (Archipelago) and she's being given huge leeway because she is fucking posh!

exhibition was pretty good too

we need some kind of venn diagram that connects xyzzz and ward's politics to this sort of aristo masturbation fantasy.

I've not seen it. Also, I've just drunk a bottle of wine.

xp it's interesting and boring. I dunno if it's good. It's unique though.

I mean, I've seen Exhibition, not this new thing.

I don't get posh = bad or what makes Hogg posh. This is description, not criticism.

it's more to do with privilege and access rather than =ing bad. You don't have to ask why it equals that she's posh, she's posh, it's just a fact.

This was excellent, almost a Taiwanese approach to character and exposition (less Tsai than Archipelago though). Major points for making Anthony a Tory prig to whom the audience never warms. Honor Swinton Byrne's un-actressy mannerisms are effective and affecting.

I laughed several times aloud. The old ladies in my audience were ready to pillory me.

And, I must say, to watch film by a female director about a budding director should not feel as fucking refreshing as it does in 2019.

best I've seen this year

and this is how the early '80s looked

sorry about being wasted upthread.

will have to see this

wau -- Morbs and I agree on a favorite of the year.

and this is how the early '80s looked

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius

yes, Anthony's endless cigarettes affected the film stock

best offkilter romance since Phantom Thread

most poignant use of Tilda Swinton too

I sensed a jape early on when she dropped "Is She Really Going Out with Him?" on the soundtrack

btw she's now shooting the sequel, and Robert Pattinson had to drop out bcz Batman etc

I read it earlier today. Maybe she can get Timothee Chalamet.

I thought The Souvenir was terrible, just interminable, Swinton Byrne was such a doormat and not a good actor at all, and just the most pallid color palette and boring, unpleasant people. Worse than Rocketman

and I see now there's a part two being filmed? excuse me?

Swinton Byrne was a marvelous camera presence.

My review.

btw the iMdB is of no use here: what other films have used the Fall's "Totally Wired"?

Silence of the Lambs used "Hip Priest", could swear i've heard "TW" used before tho

also, speaking of not spelling things out, especially for a non-British audience... I *almost* figured out what the repeated shots, and references to Julie's fondness for shopping at Harrods, was building up to. When the BOOM occurred, I knew what was up because I remember the event, but wonder how many younger Americans were puzzled.

No, just napping.

Richard Ayoade (hilarious) will be back in the sequel as the "c*nt" filmmaker; I was wondering if he was based on anyone who had a career...

I liked the screen presence of the POC giving her advice.

/Silence of the Lambs/ used "Hip Priest", could swear i've heard "TW" used before tho

I had almost forgotten Ariane Labed in the van scene near the end, but I couldn't really understand a bloody thing she was saying.

iMdB only mentions "TW" being used in an episode of "Skins."

Very few of us have the documentation of our early life that Hogg used to make this film.

from the New Yorker profile:

The night before the couple’s departure, the (Venice) trip was almost scuppered by an apparent robbery in Hogg’s apartment, in which her jewelry, her cameras, and other valuables were stolen. Hogg quickly realized that her lover had faked the theft, and had sold the items for drugs; nevertheless, the trip went ahead. “I had spent months planning, and didn’t want to give up on the plan,” Hogg said. “The show had to go on, and there was so much in the show—so much dreaming, all the ideas. It was creating a piece of work.”

The proximity of these scenes was confusing, to the degree where I wondered if the trip might not be a fantasy.

we need some kind of venn diagram that connects xyzzz and ward's politics to this sort of aristo masturbation fantasy.

LOL! I guess my answer would be, the film industry in Britain has always - with a few obvious exceptions - been utterly middle class, and I'm struggling to think of any 'creative' industry that isn't riddled with nepotism and the workings of the old boys' network. So I admire the fact that Hogg doesn't try to hide her poshness, or pretend to be something she's not; and (haven't seen this new one either) her films feel much more like a critique than a celebration of middle class privilege.

In a similar vein you can't help where or to what class you are born, its all material stuff to do things with, play with, things to discover and show and tell.

After the first Anthony breakup, the scene of the young man stripping and getting into bed with Julie drew uncontrollable giggles from a male Brooklyn filmgoer. Men are really not used to seeing nude men under the female gaze.

and dismissed as a trick!

I'm seeing online complaints that the relationship "had no context," which doesn't make any sense at all to me. There was all kinds of context!

The Souvenir now digitally available

I watched it again. Holds up like hell. How does anyone still think Julie and Anthony have no chemistry?

amusingly I watched this immediately following a set of conversations with a friend of mine who is concerned that contemporary film and storytelling are getting too self-obsessed/autobiographical/inward-looking due to fear of accusations of misrepresentation or falsehood. probably for the best I caught this one solo lol

Richard Ayoade (hilarious) will be back in the sequel as the "c*nt" filmmaker; I was wondering if he was based on anyone who had a career...

richard ayoade IS steve mcqueen in The Souvenir II: Souvenierer

If I didnt like "Exhibition", is there much chance I will like this one?

Was really enjoying the bougie dialogue and the odd couple relationship but fell asleep. I presume her character wasn't naive enough to take the old "had a bit of an accident" excuse when she sees the gammy arm with needle tracks! Definitely going watch it again from the start.

Michael B, as I liked Exhibition i can't say with any confidence, but it is different (while still recognizably hers).

This has more in common with Archipelago, notably the uses of lacunae,

that's a good word word to describe the vibe I was getting the other night which was a feeling of the emptiness of being around other people - if that makes any sense. I've never really got into her movies before but this one has piqued my interest. It's Hiddleston's furrowed brow and godawful acting that put me off her previous movies, can't deal with anything with that prick in it.

he's only in Exhibition for about 5 minutes tbf

Ah that's the one with Viv Albertine.. Thank god!

second view, clearly a great leap fwd

he seemed like less of a tosser this time

yep

I'll have to think about that whenever I do see it again because yeah, a negative charisma zone who thinks himself special. (Which, good job on the actor nailing that part of the character! A lesser actor wouldn't've managed it.) That said I take at face value the fact that there is an attraction, however invisible to me on the one hand but clearly shown in the film on the other.

That said I also think there's something to be said for reading this through a double lens of its setting in the past and in another country because viewing it from a 2019 lens meant that I couldn't help but think of the opiate explosion and lingering impact, and how we treat/talk about addiction now, but again, specifically, here, not the UK. As with other things in the film you fill in the gaps as you choose.

Music choices great, obv.

*SPOILERS, probably*

Interesting seeing this after the new Almodovar - two autobiographical films about filmmaker self-substitutes riddled with heroin that end almost identically, give or take a coda shot in Souvenir.

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.

lol nonsense thing to say seeing as some of the dialogue/themes in her movie is about class and privilege, but I've only seen the first half so far.

weird af!

to be clear this was a filmed intro, not JH herself in the room.

so it would have been even weirder to shout out!

The Souvenir is brilliant. I don’t know what more people want sometimes.

how many of you are in Europe

I’m from western Maryland.

I just thought the guy this film was focused on was such a complete zero, it made it hard for me to watch

But not unrewarding.

there was something about it that was interesting, true

it more to do with her

had more

this wasn't very good imo. at least compared to her last two

kind of The Line Of Beauty as befalling a woman but without the...beauty. or the downfall. thirty years later, she became Joanna Hogg, filmmaker. kind of a dull denouement?autobiographical films c/d etc

some lovely shots (stick to the steady-cam stuff!) esp that one of them in the mirror in Venice but I couldn't like or be moved by any of the characters

yes there was downfall but only of a tawdry he-was-bad-news-all-along sort

and yes the line of beauty works THAT angle too but...better

I haven't seen her other films but I loathed this one precisely because the main characters were so unbearably uninteresting and completely predictable. A couple where one is an asshole junkie and the other is a doormat. Neither of them are compelling in the least...

But I will check out one of her other films... tonight hopefully

how do The Line of Beauty -- the novel, presumably -- and this film intersect?

young flawed aesthete enters new flawed milieu in the decade of exploding drug use and tries to have it all (in their own way) idk, it was constantly on my mind as I watched

themes of luxury, class, delusion, persistence

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.

Afraid I was left pretty much unmoved by The Souvenir Part II, enjoyed it as I watched it but just felt I took nothing away at the end, it also felt like a piece of work in denial of its own privilege, so a bit self-indulgent, but if it connected with other people maybe that's not fair.

Guess what it came down to for me was that for all the difficulties and sadness in her life, there was never real struggle. That's not the experience of 99% of people. I'm not saying every British filmmaker needs to be Ken Loach, but having no glimpse of the void of despair in a film featuring addiction and death just stops it having any real bite.

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"?

SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER

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"?

SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER

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.