Archipelago | Little White Lies

Arch­i­pel­ago

04 Mar 2011 / Released: 04 Mar 2011

Words by Tom Seymour

Directed by Joanna Hogg

Starring Christopher Baker, Kate Fahy, and Tom Hiddleston

Group of people seated on rocky ground surrounded by moss-covered boulders.
Group of people seated on rocky ground surrounded by moss-covered boulders.
The Isles of Scil­ly pro­vide the dra­mat­ic, windswept back­drop for Joan­na Hogg’s soul­ful famil­ial drama.

Set on the scat­tered Isles of Scil­ly, Arch­i­pel­ago explores, in qui­et­ly domes­ti­cat­ed scenes, the expanse that exists between each mem­ber of a typ­i­cal fam­i­ly, but also the ties that bind them. Direc­tor Joan­na Hogg is high­ly lit­er­ate in the unsaid decrees and sub­tle gra­da­tions of man­ners that define afflu­ent mid­dle England.

She com­mu­ni­cates these with the obser­va­tion­al fac­ul­ties you’d expect of the art­house, like a Mike Leigh for posh peo­ple fused with a gen­tle Michael Haneke. In the hands of a less sen­si­tive direc­tor this film could feel small and thin, but Arch­i­pel­ago is calm, atten­tive and con­scious of over­stay­ing its welcome.

Yet a bite remains; an acute, inti­mate and search­ing frus­tra­tion. Again and again, in scenes full of humour and strain, Hogg invites her audi­ence to dis­miss these peo­ple as fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from our­selves. But sat in a dark audi­to­ri­um, we are mere­ly watch­ing our own reflections.

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