Few films in recent years have polarised audiences and critics quite as much as Archipelago, Joanna Hogg's follow-up to her much-lauded debut Unrelated. If the critics have had near-universal raptures over its long, very long, static wide-shots and natural murk, for many audiences it's simply the Emperor's new fashion range – arse-achingly pretentious art-twaddle.
Well, I say it's great: a superbly photographed, acidly funny dissection of class snobbery and familial dysfunction en vacance, where invisible elephants stampede through the guest rooms, and every infinitesimal gesture counts.
The characterisation is spot on, from Hiddleston's painfully wet young man to his moist-eyed mother, filling the watery void of her life with watercolour lessons. Easy targets perhaps, but less fish in barrels and more akin to the lobsters their poor holiday cook prepares: seemingly inert, then writhing in silent agony as Hogg turns up the heat.
Well, I say it's great: a superbly photographed, acidly funny dissection of class snobbery and familial dysfunction en vacance, where invisible elephants stampede through the guest rooms, and every infinitesimal gesture counts.
The characterisation is spot on, from Hiddleston's painfully wet young man to his moist-eyed mother, filling the watery void of her life with watercolour lessons. Easy targets perhaps, but less fish in barrels and more akin to the lobsters their poor holiday cook prepares: seemingly inert, then writhing in silent agony as Hogg turns up the heat.