Joanna Hogg on 'Exhibition' at Lincoln Center

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Monday, 16 June 2014 22:34

Written by Jack Angstreich

On June 20th, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will open Joanna Hogg's impressive film, Exhibition — which had its local premiere at last year's New York Film Festival in its Emerging Artists sidebar and which I previously reviewed here — for a two-week exclusive run. In conjunction with the release of Exhibition, beginning on June 27th the Film Society will also be screening Hogg's two previous features, Unrelated and Archipelago, for a one-week exclusive run. 

Unrelated is centered upon a middle-aged London woman who goes on holiday in Italy, staying at a villa with an old friend and her family, developing a crush on her friend's son, played by Hogg's remarkable discovery, a very young Tom Hiddleston, who went on to appear in her other two features. For those that have seen Exhibition, one can recognize the distinctive cinematic vision of that film in the very first shots of the earlier one. Hogg's films are precisely observed, confidently combining a non-classical visual detachment with oblique storytelling, her sensuous minimalism evincing an unexpected emotional plangency. The director's documentary realism attains a dialectical force in being embedded within a rigorous formalism that is reminiscent at times of the work of Peter Greenaway.

Hogg attains uniformly convincing, naturalistic performances from the rest of her unfamiliar cast, including what appear to be several non-professional actors, while Hiddleston's good looks and charisma stand out, explaining his current Hollywood fame for playing Loki in the Thor and Avengers movies. (He had a delightful star turn in Jim Jarmusch's latest feature, Only Lovers Left Alive, which also had its local premiere at last year's New York Film Festival and recently concluded a run at the Film Society.)

The cool interiors of Exhibition were better suited to the digital format than the sunlit exteriors of Italy are in Unrelated — the latter film's not inconsiderable visual power would have been significantly enhanced had Hogg been able to shoot it in 35-millimeter, whatever other economic or practical advantages that digital may have afforded her. Despite this deficiency, Unrelated is a very engaging, memorable work, well worth a look.

Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street
New York, NY 10023

For more information, go to: www.filmlinc.com and follow @filmlinc on Twitter.

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