Typical Girls: Women in Punk/Post-Punk/Underground Music (Circa 1975-1980s)

[Annette Weatherman <misschief AT earthlink.net>]

Nice review! Thanks


On Sep 6, 2013, at 12:31 PM, Joly MacFie <joly AT punkcast.com> wrote:

> http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Public-spaces-private-lives/29791
> 
> Joanna Hogg’s third feature, “Exhibition”, had its premiere at the
> Locarno Film Festival last month. It stars the musician and film
> director Viv Albertine (best known as member of post-punk band the
> Slits) and conceptualist Liam Gillick as D and H, an artist couple
> selling their home in West London. There is little story as such,
> rather the film unfolds as a series of episodes and tableaux, laying
> out creative tensions, sexual anxiety and ennui, and in D’s case
> strongly suggesting frustration at coming second to H’s clearly more
> successful career.
> 
> The film has something to unsettle everybody. Middle-class couples of
> a certain age will squirm at the mis-timed communication between its
> two leads; H’s well-intentioned but self-regarding ego will likely
> seem very familiar to many women. Those who think artists live a
> pampered life, devoid of contact with the everyday demands of the
> wider world, will see their suspicions confirmed on screen. And, with
> a great deal of the tension created by implication and hint, an air of
> trepidation permeates the film, creating the constant expectation that
> something very bad might be about to unfold or will be shown to have
> happened in the past.
> 
> The sparse dialogue and slight awkwardness of the principal actors,
> both making their debuts, adds to the unease. More often than not,
> they communicate by intercom from their respective creative spaces.
> The beautiful but soulless house they live in (the self-designed
> former home of the architect James Melvin) is the film’s third
> principal actor. Its fortress-like exterior and shifting internal
> divisions further isolate the human performers and Hogg makes
> affecting use of sound as the heavy sliding doors are often heard to
> open and close at a remove, suggesting an action that leaves one of
> the principals—more often than not D—along with the audience to guess
> what may be happening elsewhere.
> 
> There’s a subject fit here with Michael Haneke’s or Ian McEwan’s
> portrayals of creeping middle-class paranoia but Hogg never takes
> things to those writers’ destructive conclusions. Will D’s forthcoming
> exhibition allow her to get out from under H’s ego? Will the sale of
> the house, so central to the way they relate to each other, allow them
> to breathe? We’ll never know: the low-level and permanent fear that we
> are teetering on the edge of disaster is all that’s left.
> 
> “Exhibition” is due to be released in 2014.
> 
> -- 
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