Hogg’s Archipelago (JDIFF 2011) was about a well-to-do English family on a miserable holiday in the Scilly Isles: her new film shifts its focus to the capital. Exhibition is set almost entirely between the walls and windows of a modernist dream house in a leafy Victorian enclave. Living inside it are a couple played by two first-time actors: Viv Albertine, a former guitarist from the punk band The Slits, and the conceptual artist Liam Gillick.
Their initials are D and H – we never hear their full names – and both are artists who work from home. But something in their past has left both of them unquiet. It becomes clear that D is agoraphobic, and she stands behind the Venetian blinds in her underwear, toying with the idea of being observed at her most vulnerable. She is planning a performance art event, and Albertine deftly sketches her arc from inhibition to exhibition, leaving no sliver of her soul unbared.
Hogg’s film is alive with anxiety, with scenes that rattle your nerves like stones in a tin. This is confident, uncompromising work, with a ghostliness that plays on your mind for days, and it cements Hogg’s place at the forefront of new British cinema.
Robbie Collin
The Telegraph
‘a chilly, thoughtful and gently striking film’
Screen International
‘an impressively mature and crafted work’
The Hollywood Reporter
