Exhi­bi­tion

If, as the say­ing goes, home is where the heart is, then in Exhi­bi­tion it is also sanc­tu­ary to the mind, body and soul. Uncom­mon­ly attuned to gra­da­tions between cog­ni­tive exis­tence and phys­i­cal expe­ri­ence, British direc­tor Joan­na Hogg’s third fea­ture turns aes­thet­ic deter­min­ism into a nar­ra­tive frame­work by which action direct­ly cor­re­sponds with the sur­round­ing environment.

The film’s sim­ple sto­ry, con­cern­ing a hus­band and wife in the process of sell­ing their home of many years, is ren­dered com­plex by an inter­nal com­po­si­tion­al log­ic which reflects tremors among the cou­ple and their mod­ernist sur­round­ings alike. In Exhi­bi­tion, archi­tec­ture trans­lates as the phys­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal and emo­tion­al infra­struc­ture of its char­ac­ters – one seem­ing­ly can­not advance with­out alter­ing the mate­r­i­al iden­ti­ty of the other.

The film opens and clos­es in curi­ous­ly sim­i­lar fash­ion, with the char­ac­ter of the wife, known only as D (played by Viv Alber­tine of British post-punk leg­ends the Slits), con­tort­ing her­self around inan­i­mate con­struc­tions through­out the house. Her hus­band, H (Liam Gillick), seems the more prag­mat­ic of the two, accom­mo­dat­ing bro­kers (includ­ing one played by Tom Hid­dle­ston) and work­ing dili­gent­ly as a con­cep­tu­al artist in his home office.

When not fold­ing her­self around var­i­ous objects, D, also an artist, spends her time work­ing out per­for­mance pieces which invari­ably devolve into either exhi­bi­tion­ist dis­plays for her neigh­bours or exer­cis­es in per­son­al plea­sure. She’s frus­trat­ed – sex­u­al­ly, pro­fes­sion­al­ly and emo­tion­al­ly. She shuts down H’s inti­mate advances only to sat­is­fy her­self as he sleeps qui­et­ly by her side. Her life appears to be one elab­o­rate artis­tic dis­play, except there’s an unset­tling hol­low­ness to her ges­tures that sug­gests an unspo­ken longing.

Hogg doesn’t dis­close much regard­ing the moti­va­tion of her char­ac­ters. She instead reflects the dynam­ic (or lack there­of) of the cen­tral rela­tion­ship in for­mal short­hand. Con­sis­tent­ly sta­t­ic, askew and care­ful­ly dia­grammed, her com­po­si­tions car­ry a simul­ta­ne­ous­ly elu­sive and expres­sive qual­i­ty. In Hogg’s hands, every sur­face is both a lit­er­al and fig­u­ra­tive mir­ror; space is expand­ed in many instances by reflec­tions in glass, mar­ble, and alu­mini­um façades.

More is said in Hogg’s impres­sive­ly pre­cise visu­al style than in any of the dia­logue, which is as sparse as the film’s inte­ri­ors. Few recent films have approached mat­ters of anatom­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal integri­ty as demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly as Exhibition.

But what of all this aes­thet­ic ded­i­ca­tion – to what ends is Hogg work­ing here? For­mal­ly, Exhi­bi­tion has much in com­mon with works of clas­sic for­mal­ism, par­tic­u­lar­ly Rossellini’s films with Ingrid Bergman in the ear­ly 1950s (Strom­boli, Europe ​’51, Jour­ney to Italy) and Antonioni’s out­put dur­ing his struc­tural­ist peri­od (La Notte, L’eclisse), but it lacks the grav­i­ty acquired by those films as they sub­ject­ed their char­ac­ters to volatile new environments.

Exhi­bi­tion is thus per­haps more rem­i­nis­cent of the ongo­ing Greek New Wave, in which films such as Atten­berg, Alps and Miss Vio­lence utilise com­po­si­tion­al aus­ter­i­ty to actu­alise the severe inter­nal make­up of their char­ac­ters. Unlike many of those films, how­ev­er, Exhi­bi­tion is able to locate a vital human warmth in its pre­ci­sion. The con­se­quences of their impend­ing tran­si­tion may be left just out of the audience’s purview, but the char­ac­ters in Exhi­bi­tion, like all of Hogg’s out­put thus far, leave one intense­ly curi­ous for more.