Exhibition

After two impressive features that established Joanna Hogg as a distinctive voice in British cinema, her third film, Exhibition, finds the filmmaker pushing her artistry in a number of fresh and adventurous directions. Gone are the ensemble dramas of Unrelated and Archipelago, here being replaced by an elliptical, fragmented style that is simultaneously more intimate and more oblique.

First-time actors Viv Albertine and Liam Gillick play D and H, two artists preparing to sell the modernist London house they have lived in for most of their two-decade marriage.  With this imminent change creating a rupture in their relationship, an undefined past trauma is gradually brought back to the surface. Exhibition is a probing study of the creative process, female sexuality and the myriad ways in which we relate to our environment and each other. Both Hogg's exceptional use of space and the complex sound design ensure that the striking architecture D and H inhabit is as much of a character as they are. [Philip Concannon]