Hoard review – proud­ly strange and provocative

Please take a knee, hoist those petticoats/​breeches, and wel­come one of the most dis­tinc­tive new voic­es in British cin­e­ma: the supreme­ly tal­ent­ed south­east Lon­don­er, Luna Car­moon. Her ele­gant­ly scruffy and emo­tion­al­ly com­plex debut fea­ture Hoard is a must-see for any­one inter­est­ed in chal­leng­ing, orig­i­nal, cliché-avoid­ing art. It’s a film that heads to the shad­owy spots that most film­mak­ers on this scep­tred isle don’t even know exist; every frame exud­ing both a breath­less con­fi­dence and a warped visu­al lit­er­a­cy which sug­gests a direc­tor on a mis­sion to do any­thing to make an audi­ence feel some­thing – which is com­plete­ly refresh­ing to behold.

The title refers to the noc­tur­nal activ­i­ties of Cyn­thia (a heart­break­ing Hay­ley Squires), an eccen­tric sin­gle moth­er who rais­es her daugh­ter Maria (Lily-Beau Leach) with a tac­tile ten­der­ness while head­ing out to hoard items of rub­bish that oth­ers have tossed away. Their house con­tains tee­ter­ing piles of scav­enged mat­ter and has its own fug­gy micro­cli­mate. The fam­i­lies of rodents who have moved are wel­comed with glow­ing eyes and open arms. The social stig­ma of what is crude­ly referred to as the ​“Bag Lady” is com­plete­ly ignored, and Cynthia’s wide-eyed pas­sion is pre­sent­ed as an exten­sion of her appar­ent­ly bot­tom­less capac­i­ty for love and compassion.

Maria is the film’s cen­tral focus, and it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to wit­ness a depic­tion of alter­na­tive par­ent­ing that is whol­ly non-judg­men­tal. If any­thing Car­moon accen­tu­ates the pos­i­tives – the warm­ing, cocoon-like idyl that this two­some have con­struct­ed for them­selves – rather than tut-tut­ting at the atten­dant health haz­ards that come from liv­ing in such self-engi­neered squalor. This is a film that pro­motes love in any-which-way, uncov­er­ing all its strange, unrecog­nis­able guis­es and say­ing that’s it’s okay even when it’s osten­si­bly very fucked up.

And on that note, fol­low­ing the cul­mi­na­tion of its extend­ed open­ing chap­ter, the film bold­ly leaps for­ward in time and we recon­vene with Maria (beau­ti­ful­ly played by Saura Light­foot Leon) who is now old­er, a lit­tle wis­er, but still suf­fused with many of the anti­so­cial impuls­es of her way­ward moth­er. We learn that she has spent her teenage years in fos­ter care, and that her guardian Michelle (Saman­tha Spiro) is lov­ing and mater­nal, albeit in a more con­ven­tion­al man­ner. Has there ever been a film that has pre­sent­ed fos­ter par­ent­ing in such an affir­ma­tive way?

With school almost over, Maria has to make deci­sions on how she will move for­ward in life, but she instead descends into a sur­re­al lim­bo, where her basic abil­i­ties for self-care have sud­den­ly shut down. There’s a sug­ges­tion she may be trans­form­ing into her now-estranged moth­er. She enters into a mutu­al­ly-aggres­sive, erot­i­cal­ly-charged rela­tion­ship with Joseph Quinn’s Michael, one of Michelle’s for­mer fos­ter kids, who draws out (and is fas­ci­nat­ed by) some of Maria’s curi­ous sex­u­al peccadilloes.

The sit­u­a­tion that Car­moon cul­ti­vates is one that you can’t take your eyes off of while also want­i­ng to con­stant­ly look away from. There are some inge­nious­ly repul­sive set-pieces that tick­le both fun­ny bone and gag reflex, but noth­ing is done for its own sake, for unso­licit­ed provo­ca­tion. Every­thing is at the ser­vice of enhanc­ing char­ac­ter and mood. 

Even­tu­al­ly, Hoard is revealed as a deeply mov­ing ode to the dif­fer­ent paths we take in search of love, hap­pi­ness and accep­tance, and for­mal­ly the film ascribes to its own the­sis by avoid­ing so many of the pro­sa­ic plat­i­tudes and visu­al ​“moves” that appar­ent­ly must fea­ture in any and all British film pro­duc­tions. Car­moon is some­one who wears her exten­sive cinephile knowl­edge light­ly, and does not toss in homages or ref­er­ences to the film­mak­ers who have inspired her, instead opt­ing to speak with her own voice. Yet what we can say is she is clear­ly tak­ing in restora­tive waters from the same pool that Lynne Ram­say was sup­ping from when she made Rat­catch­er, and there can be no high­er praise than that.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, week­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.