Joanna Hogg’s third film has been a buzz-magnet on the recent festival circuit, drawing comparisons to Haneke, Tarkovsky, Malick, Antonioni, and Akerman. A well-off, artistic West London couple identified only as D (she) and H (he) find their already tenuous relationship threatened by the impending sale of their home. Through coolly meticulous compositions and sound design, Hogg dissolves the boundaries between exterior and interior, and between architecture and inhabitant. The house itself (a glass-and-partitions modernist showpiece) truly becomes a character in the film, functioning as the couple’s child, mirror, sanctuary, prison, lover (most explicitly in D’s furtive acts of exhibitionism and masturbation), and much more.
