zif ofoz
I saw this film some weeks past and I was most taken with its cinematic beauty and disturbing undercurrent of family relations in a 'privileged class' family.As an American I can see this story as conflicts not just in this one family we see but in the entire class system found in Britain and to some degree here in the US. I believe the pivotal scene in this story is found when Christopher wants to invite the cook/housekeeper to eat dinner with them because it's the polite thing to do. His sister will have none of this and takes offense at the very suggestion. The mother is undecided but agrees with her daughter. Christopher asks why not and no valid reason can be given other than its inappropriate for staff to eat with family. When Christopher offers to help clean up the table and dishes the housekeeper ask "What am I suppose to do, this is my job". She too is an island.The family here cannot communicate between themselves nor with those they see as beneath them. Like it or not there is a separation between classes in society and family members. Like an Archipelago it's all one unit but we are our own island.Here we see just one interpretation of this human problem. And beautifully told.
paul2001sw-1
The plot of 'Archpeligo' is very simple: a repressed, upper-middle class family go on holiday to Sicily and proceed to have a dull, miserable time. And that's it. The underlying cause of their inability to enjoy life is never explained, there are no dramatic developments, nor any particularly sympathetic characters; just a selection of privileged individuals sharing mutual unhappiness. It's sometimes said, probably falsely, that everyone has a book in them; this film feels as if someone felt they had a film in them, presumably inspired by their own insipid life. If this is actually a work of imagination, then I'm even more alarmed.
Tweekums
Before Edward departs for eleven months of volunteer work in Africa his family decide to get together for a family holiday on the island of Tresco in the off season. Here Edward, his sister Cynthia and his mother Patricia are joined by Rose the cook and art teacher Christopher. It quickly becomes apparent that there are family tensions; Cynthia clearly doesn't agree with her brother's decision to go to Africa thinking he should get a real job and there father never turns up despite talking to the phone to Patricia more than once. We follow them through their holiday; watching them go for a picnic, go out for a meal at the hotel and sit and talk... or sometimes just sit. As time passes tempers fray but never so much that we think it may have a lasting effect on the characters. Then they leave.Having enjoyed many visits to the Isles of Scilly over the years I really wanted to enjoy this; the problem was it felt a little too real; as though we were just being shown a group of fairly unsympathetic characters having a miserable time on holiday. There were long pauses and conversations about things of little consequence; realistic perhaps but sadly not that interesting. Strangely the family seemed to have almost no interaction with anybody but each other, Rose and Christopher; we see Rose chatting to a couple of locals when she acquires some lobsters and pheasants for dinner but apart from that the island seems strangely deserted... even when they go out for dinner the restaurant is deserted apart from the staff... if it hadn't been for the fact that we see them leave at the end I might have thought it was all a metaphor for purgatory! I can't really fault the actors as I did believe in the characters; even if this meant I disliked many of them! I might not have found this hilarious but I'd be lying if I said I didn't laugh at all.While this clearly wasn't the film for me I certainly wouldn't recommend avoiding it all together; the large number of '10' reviews suggests quite a few people love it; perhaps I was just missing something and you will love it too.
aelaycock
The thing that above all else singles us out from other species is our empathy, our sympathy, our ability to help, to sort things out. A pair of albatrosses may mate for life, and even show signs of real affection for each other. But if one of them breaks its wing, there is little the other can do except watch its partner die an agonising death. Nature is utterly indifferent to hurt, trauma, whatever. However beautiful that nature is, it is completely unengaged in the fate of its denizens. Here we have a posh family arriving in the Scilly Isles in November, taking up residence in a presumably familiar environment. They are going to paint and enjoy some well-cooked food served up by an employee, a girl from Hertfordshire. They will be joined by somebody else, who we have to assume is the father, though we are never told this explicitly – and needless to say, he never arrives (Is that a spoiler? How can you spoil a film like this?). And we know that, like Godot, he is never going to arrive.One of the deeply annoying things about this film is that we discover nothing much about the family – their history, their background, where they come from, whether there are other siblings. We learn a few things about the son – he is doing some sort of volunteer work in Africa, related to Aids. His sister who is in unspecified full-time employment, disapproves of his life choices. He has a girlfriend (not present) whom, bizarrely, he is only going to see once in the next year because she is not allowed to join him in Africa. Of the mother we know nothing, her existence is totally wrapped up in her neurosis about her (presumably) dying marriage. Clearly there is conflict in this family, at odds with the vacuous serenity of their surroundings. There is another player in this bleak tableau, a pretentious professional painter who is tutoring members of the family. He is perhaps the most annoying character of them all, spouting painterly platitudes, being embarrassed by the gaping wound that is the dysfunctional family, ultimately unable to help, just observe in a state of boredom (like us the viewers). Painters should keep their mouths shut.Now I love the Scilly Isles. But the Scilly Isles in the off season? Really? When you are already traumatised, upset, depressed, bored? What a monumentally bad choice of a venue for a damaged family to take a holiday.The dialogue and acting are extremely naturalistic, we could be earwigging on an actual event. This could be a documentary, so utterly real and pedestrian is the conversation and activity. Hence the three stars I have awarded it. We are observing and listening to something deeply uninteresting, the interaction between real other people we neither know nor like. I'm now thinking that perhaps the painter is a real-life painter, in which case I withdraw my earlier comments. His paintings actually look good if they are real. But back to our characters. We don't even get to see them in close-up until the end. All we are given is the beauty of Tresco, with its windswept alien plant life.I watched to the bitter end, because I was expecting a caped crusader to come flying through the window with a laser gun. Or the cook to use her set of knives to good purpose and slaughter everybody. Or the helicopter to blow up. None of this happened, unfortunately. These unlikable, uncharming people just packed up and left. The end. After watching it I was desperate to immerse myself in something warm and fuzzy, possibly involving Hugh Grant or Jackie Chan. Or Audrey Hepburn. With some songs and some sex. And an exploding helicopter.
