Archipelago

Writer/director Joanna Hogg is clearly fascinated by middle-class holidaymakers struggling to leave their cares behind. Here, as in the Tuscan-set Unrelated (2007), she relies on telephone conversations and off-screen squabbles to chronicle the tensions arising within an affluent family with nothing better to do than contemplate its shortcomings. Edward (Tom Hiddleston) has joined his mother Patricia (Kate Fahy) and sister Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) for a holiday on Tresco in the Scilly Isles, before embarking upon voluntary work in Africa - his father is due to join them later. But Cynthia questions both Edward's motives and his interest in Rose (Amy Lloyd), a young woman hired as a cook, while their mother is more concerned with the insights of her painting teacher (Christopher Baker). The bickering occasionally becomes excruciating, with the judgemental Cynthia embarrassing everyone with her outburst in a local restaurant. But the improvisational approach allows longueurs to creep in and the awkward naturalism of the performances becomes increasingly stiff. Ed Rutherford's photography is superb, but this is a pale imitation of an Ingmar Bergman chamber drama.