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  Average Rating for Archipelago - 5 out of 5

  
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• Archipelago

  Barnaby Walter 16 September 2011

  

  Seldom do you hear someone say to a friend 'Let's go and see that naturalistic low-budget British film that's only showing in a handful of cinemas across the country about a group of whining middle-class holiday-makers who cannot agree to disagree about the many pointless problems in their bourgeois lives.' And even less often would the response be 'Oh yes! I'd love to! I'm always interested to see how posh people work out their problems by painting, walking round the Scilly Isles and generally hating each other.' The understandable response would probably be something more along the lines of 'No. Let's go and see Sucker Punch!!!'
  
  But this is a shame, as the second film from talented British rising star Joanna Hogg (who directed the critically acclaimed Unrelated) is one of the best and most interesting films 2011 has turned up so far. It is so much more than what the trailer, or some of the surrounding publicity of the film, suggests it to be (an upper-middle-class family bickering in a rented holiday-home). Archipelago doesn't have the arrogance to adopt a 'posh people have issues too' agenda, but instead slowly ensnares its audience into the problems of this hard-to-like family without ever assuming we are one of them.
  
  Keeping a distance is key in this meticulously filmed near-masterpiece, and there has never been a more compelling work to support the argument that cinematic absorption can be achieved through extreme detachment. The camera doesn't invite us in. It watches, waits and lets these people slowly dig their own graves. In a way, you could argue it's Big Brother for the Waitrose crowd, but with artistic validity and talent on its side.
  
  Tom Hiddleston probably shines the most of the bunch as the kind, slightly-lost son, Edward. He's in his twenties and doesn't quite know what he should be doing with his life. In a move met with disapproval from his sister Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) and vagueness from his mother (Kate Fahy), he has decided to go to Africa to help AIDS victims and teach about safe sex. But this involves leaving his girlfriend for eleven months, a girlfriend who was barred from attending the family holiday because, as Cynthia icily says, 'she's not really family'. Indeed, Cynthia fails to understand why he wants to go to Africa at all, and feels he should 'just get on with getting a job and working like the rest of us'.
  
  Cynthia's role in the film at first seems to be that of the kind, slightly self-centred sister, but it soon becomes clear she is harbouring some deeper issues. It isn't certain what has caused her to be so bitter so early in life, but she insists on using words as weapons and isn't afraid to voice her resentment at her brother and mother. There is one agonisingly awkward, although subtly funny, scene where the family, their cook and an artist-friend go to a restaurant and Cynthia brings the mood of the outing down to that of a wake. She is an embarrassment, and you cannot help feeling sorry for everyone else round the table.
  
  The father is absent from the picture, but speaks to his adult offspring and his wife on the phone promising to come to the holiday-home as soon as he can. Throughout the film it seems doubtful he will ever turn up, and this is a source of consistent pressure on the three, particularly the mother who whispers down the phone-line to her husband 'I just can't bare it'. You cannot blame him for not wanting to join.
  
  The artist that Cynthia and her mother invite on their outings round the Isles, and back to their home to have further awkward dinners, is played by real-life painter Christopher Baker. He is not a professional actor, and serves to represent the audience as he silently observes the terrible tensions within the family, while still trying to teach the mother to paint.
  
  The other outsider is Amy Lloyd as the family's cook. She makes their tea, clears the table and doesn't seem to mind her work. But Edward feels it is ridiculous to have someone taking their plates away when he could carry them himself. He goes ahead and helps, in an effort to be considerate to the poor woman, but only makes things more awkward: 'what should I do then?' she asks of him, as he does her work for her.
  
  The decision not to use any music in the film works wonders, refusing us any comforting aesthetic barriers between us, as an audience, and the characters onscreen. The feeling of detachment we have from these people works through our appreciation of them as human beings; an integral aspect which would have been lessened if a semi-pretentious string quartet was grinding away on the score in the background. The use of naturalistic cinematography, reliant on natural light, also gives the audience the sense of viewing these people through a glass-less window, similar to that of a stage, but the filming remains calm enough so as not to evoke the feeling of documentary.
  
  Archipelago isn't always a pleasant ordeal, but it is one which should be sought out by anyone who appreciates the complex and subtle power cinema can have on the open-minded. It is not a film for everyone, but I hope those who take a chance on it will be surprised by the extraordinary effect it can render. Joanna Hogg is a director not afraid to play with form and style, and still manages to produce films that give their audiences no shortage of cinematic-meat to chew on. She is to be cherished, encouraged and rewarded for her skill and bravery.

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In writer/director Joanna Hogg's moving drama ARCHIPELAGO, a young man takes a farewell trip with his family before leaving them to do a year's voluntary work in Africa. Edward (Tom Hiddleston), his mother Patricia (Kate Fahy) and his sister Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) rent a house on a remote island, and plan to enjoy each other's company before saying goodbye. But what begins as a pleasant holiday soon starts to unravel as unspoken tensions bubble to the surface.

British filmmaker Joanna Hogg writes and directs this drama set in the Scilly Isles, painting a portrait of a middle class English family under strain. When Edward (Tom Hiddleston) announces his plans to go on a volunteer trip to Africa, his mother Patricia (Kate Fahy) decides to gather her family together for a farewell holiday in the Scillies. But as they go through the motions of the carefree family holiday and anticipate the imminent arrival of Edward's father, old fractures begin to surface.