Temporary Accommodation: Joanna Hogg's Cinema of Dispossession

Joanna Hogg's cinema is characterized by its formal precision and its unflinching take on upper-middle class privilege, especially in the context of the family. Her first two feature films—Unrelated (2007) and Archipelago (2010)—scrutinize the dynamics of unhappy families on vacation. Exhibition (2015) takes a long hard look at a couple, both of whom are artists, as they go about their everyday lives in their modernist London home. All of these films avail themselves of rigorous framing and frequent long-take cinematography in order to make cinematic space itself a vehicle of emotional and political analysis. Her most recent feature, The Souvenir (2019), converts elements of Hogg's own biography to tell the story of a young filmmaker who learns the hard way that filmmaking and romantic love are the most difficult enterprises.