Exhibition
Joanna Hogg 2013 UK
Starring: Viv Albertine, Liam Gillick, Tom Hiddleston, Mary Roscoe
Fractured familial dynamics is nothing new for Joanna Hogg - her 2010 work Archipelago for example took as one of its subjects sibling rivalry - but never before has she tackled the topic so wholeheartedly and uniquely. The plot here (if indeed you can call it that) concerns a middle-aged married couple, D and H, both artists, deep into their second decade of matrimony and seemingly in a rut. Their house, that they're in the process of selling, reflects them perfectly. It's modern yet stripped back, strangely angular, a single staircase spirals up through the middle of the building like a corkscrew, the handleless doors slide apart and fold away into the wall, noises that sound almost alien to our ears ricochet and echo both from outside and within, often from unseen sources, as if the property acts as a simultaneously protective and eerily malevolent shell bordered by expansive windows, all covered by blinds, both enclosing the owners and acting as a clandestine means for them to view the outside world. The affection between the pair is obvious but they come close to living apart, often communicating via an intercom system from their separate rooms that the other isn't allowed to enter. Both are repeatedly shown laying still as if playing dead, dreamy and restless, like they're simply furniture in the other's environment. Control is a clear issue; they plainly understand one another's requirement for their own space but you have to wonder who outlined the boundaries. Hogg doesn't give any clues or even take a side, instead remaining a static observer, never judging. Sometimes it appears as if we're seeing things from D's (Viv Albertine, formerly of the punk band The Slits) viewpoint, she's certainly the most complex, or at least the most explored, character. She has a frustrated yearning about her, an unspoken desperation to find an escape from her isolation and the current state of her existence, ennui is not quite the right term but it's close. When H (the conceptual artist Liam Gillick) leaves briefly she's wholly affected by his absence and, lost without him, she ends up meandering about the house obsessively, apparently checking the fixtures are still there. When he does attempt to bridge the gap however she refuses his advances and their bodies entangled in the quilt become ridiculous. Later she simply allows herself to go limp forcing him to remove her top like he's undressing a mannequin in a slightly rapey fashion and the contradiction is only taken further when she fakes collapse to escape a dinner party. The only other people they come into contact with are an angry driver and a pair of estate agents, one of whom is played in what may be a joke by Tom Hiddleston, the biggest star of the production but on screen for under five minutes and embodying a largely unimportant role that practically anyone else could have played. D also displays an otherwise unexplored fetishism, donning high heels and pleasuring herself as H sleeps soundly beside her and playing with ties and duct tape, her cravings only freed when she's alone. Overall more is said in the precise but rapidly expanding structures than in the dialogue. If Hogg's meticulousness with her interiors are evident however her intent remains enigmatic. At times it appears that her theme is the voyeurism of our reality TV obsessed world, both as practised by the characters and by us with them as our focus, but D and H are hardly an everyday couple that we're being allowed to spy upon and possibly connect with. The dreamlike sequence in which the couple take part in a Q & A session with their marriage as the subject and a passive audience (which D is part of) would certainly support this theory but their (edited) life and the virtually action-free narrative feel too insular and unspectacular for it to be truly valid. Perhaps she's inviting us to muse on the role of individualism in marriage or the seclusion and general disconnect contemporary capitalism has brought about, showing us that despite her leads being comfortably well-off and ensconced in their own specially created, detail rich nests there are still gaps that can't be covered with money. Really when it comes down to it all the viewer can be sure of is that Hogg's intimate, naturalistic, minimalist yet moving glide through present-day terror is utterly enrapturing, at once remote, warm and entirely unique. The best film I've seen this year.
