Exhibition (2013)

It is a performances centric movie

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Joanna Hogg makes sparse, almost stilted films about uncommunicative, and to my mind, unappealing middle class people. 'Exhibition' is not quite as painful to watch as her earlier film 'Archipelago', but it does feel a little pointless: an architect loves his artistic wife, even though they don't really talk to each other. Her explicit refusal to discuss her work is made exasperating for the viewer because the film doesn't show us it either, at least not in any terms that one could imagine as saleable product: the vision of the artist here is of someone spending time alone, periodically donning weird outfits and standing or sitting in strange positions. Instead of the art-theme predominating, we're just left with the irritating ticks of the overly-fortunate. It feels like an improvisation that was never turned into a finished script.

'Exhibition' provides a credible insight in the marriage of a couple in their fifties. Which may not be too interesting for younger people, but there's no denying that we have a cleverly made & tasteful film on our hands.A feature that may be contrary to present times: 'Exhibition's rather low pace. Producer Joanna Hogg takes her time to explain the workings of this marriage. Including some small individual secrets of the wife, performed well by Viv Albertine (in her younger days a famous Punk-guitarist).Being a child of the 1960-s, I cannot escape to compare 'Exhibition' with Michelangelo Antonioni's famous 'Blow-up'. Which goes in particular for the relaxed build-up of a rather meager story, supported by many moody images. As well as by incorporating some architectural beauty.However, you should do an injustice to 'Exhibition' to regard her as a copy of whatever other film. Joanna Hogg's newest surely has enough quality to stand on its own.

The term 'Art Film' can sometimes mean an interesting, unique experience full of symbolic possibility, or it can be a code word for pretentious bore-fest! Exhibition easily falls in the latter.D (Viv Albertine) and H (Liam Gillick) are a married couple who live in what Al Pacino from 'Heat' would describe as a 'Bullshit postmodern apartment!' They are both artists and have their own studio in separate rooms. They communicate to each other by using the speaker phone, and there is a spiral staircase which unites the house. We see D sitting around in her room moving a stool around and sitting on it, putting together some kind of conceptual art performance which symbolises something. There is a shot of her lying on a rock or opening cupboard doors and other random, pedestrian activities which I don't care about. There seems to be tension between the couple. D does not like to talk to H about her art because he might be honest to the point of insensitive. H tries to occasionally assert his manhood by trying to have sex with her but she resists. More scenes of them sitting around talking about stuff and waffle about the house being a living and breathing entity which harbours good vibrations within the walls. They have to sell the house for some reason, but D wants to stay and blah blah blah! I found it so tedious and so monotonous, I started looking away from the screen as I did not care what was going on at all. Both characters were unlikable, un-relatable and a couple of hollow, ostentatious snobs making the kind of art which is disposable and meaningless. With all these glowing reviews stating how enigmatic and sensual it was, I had no feelings of any kind of enigma or sensuality whatsoever. Was I missing something? Clearly I am the wrong target audience here who has no care for understanding whatever the point of this film was. I am sure it's not that important…. to non pretentious people anyway!

Spoiler Alert:This films is absolute sh*t.It's a real case of the emperors new clothes. Having worked in the film and TV industry for 22 years I know a lot of technician and actors. and I know a lot of technicians and actors who have worked with The Director Joanna Hogg. They all laugh as she is considered to be truly appalling as a director, she doesn't plan, isn't inventive, doesn't block actors well, or give good direction, she has no originality and everything she has was created by someone else and has absolutely no understanding or lighting, camera or editing, an absolute nightmare. Please Joanna, tell me what it is you bring to the set? But apparently this is OK according to the critics who for some reason applaud her minimalist ability.Very much in the same way that a child might scrawl some green crayon on a canvass, and then an art gallery owner might decide to hand the scribble in his gallery so to do the critics laud this scribble.As a technician I can see actors looking for marks, stumbling over each others lines, whilst clearly improvising lines that don't quite make sense. I see poor framing and bad lighting, I see the camera work is tedious, the editing perfunctory, in my head I keep saying, "Cut, cut, cut, please for the love of God cut." and it still won't cut.The script is woeful in it's sheer lack of content, I swear that if it was written out it'd be about 50 pages.Archipelago was truly insulting to film makers and crew, and this is worse. Please Joanna stop, just stop, you have no talent and no vision, you are a waste of digital resources when we could be watching something else like best of face palm on you-tube.You have been warned. This film is sh*t.