Exhibition Review by Frank L.

Directed by Joanna Hogg

Stars: Viv Albertine, Liam Gillick, Tom Hiddleston

For her third feature film, Hogg chooses a childless, married couple of some twenty years standing to dissect the daily happenings of an upwardly mobile, successful, middle- class London life. The action takes place in the house which they have had built and it is of the minimalist school with sliding doors, floor to ceilings windows, a substantial marital bed, a vast sofa without arms, a super shiny kitchen and nothing much else other than a lift and a spiral staircase up and down which they go. The house is almost totally devoid of personal bric a brac but a small Buddha, sitting in a niche designed for her reading light switch beside the matrimonial bed, can be seen…just. The wife is a performance artist who also draws, he is involved in artistic endeavour which primarily engages him on his computer. They have separate work spaces and during the day they communicate by intercom.

Londoners are obsessed by residential property (and its value) and while the price of the house is not specifically mentioned the fact that the house is both desirable and valuable is underlined by the two very smooth estate agents who are retained to sell it. The house is a very particular house with an equally particular and superior type of potential purchaser. It seems that the house has been central to their relationship as the third member of a menage a trois. It enables them to live their distant lives.

The man and woman do not have names but are referred to in the credits as D and H. There are intimate scenes in the house between D and H, almost without emotion, and these have a coolness which is in harmony with the coolness of the third member of the menage, the house. Hogg is a realist and overt raw passion is unlikely to be often on display as this couple and the house are on the verge of completing twenty years of co-existence.

Hogg portrays brilliantly the husband’s insecurity as is evidenced by his proprietorial rage when a workman usurps his parking space and the wife’s low boredom threshold is equally well portrayed by a clever little bit of faking by H at a “jolly” supper with a neighbouring couple whose primary, almost sole, topic of conversation is their children. The neighbours’ house is a family home and is the antithesis of the house.

Hogg has chosen an unusual cast. Liam Gillick, performance artist and former Turner prize nominee, makes his debut as D while Viv Albertine, former member of Punk band The Slits makes her debut as H. Both have been well cast and give assured performances. There is a suave cameo appearance by Tom Hiddleston as the estate agent and the neighbour’s wife is played infuriatingly well by Mary Roscoe as she witters on about the children ad infinitum.

Hogg delves without sentiment into the lives of people on the greasy pole of success and is astute at displaying how fragile that success is. In addition she has an ability to engage in opposites which she does brilliantly in the final scenes of this clear- sighted and unsettling film.