The Beauty of Absurdity - Luna Carmoon: Hoard
As a first-time filmmaker, it is very brave to make a film, which you can predict in advance that not everyone will like. In fact, it probably pushes a few buttons for many. However, the profession rewarded the courage of British director Luna Carmoon. Her film Hoard was nominated for four awards at the Venice Film Festival, three of which she took home, and she was also nominated in various categories at numerous film festivals.
There's that feeling when I'm drawn to something, but I don’t know why. When someone pushes the boundaries just so much that it's not disturbing, but it's not usual either. In the last months I had little patience to watch movies, I didn't even write reviews, I was bored by the fact that most films are based on the same scheme. And then Luna Carmoon came (actually it was Joseph Quinn and The Quiet Place - Day One, but it doesn’t matter) and the Hoard, which brought that certain feeling back. British arthouse films have a certain edginess - anyone who's seen Trainspotting knows what I'm talking about. It's clear from the Hoard’s trailer that this film fits into the most abstract category possible, even among independents. The best thing about this type of film is that the acting is so strong that the story is almost secondary. However, Carmoon wrote a pretty good story and presents it all through the British working class, placing his characters in the 80s and the 90s.
Hayley Squires / Photo: www.natturnercostume.com/hoard
Maria (Lily-Beau Leach/Saura Lightfoot-Leon) lives with her mother (Hayley Squires) in the suburbs of London. The first frames are quite telling. It's night, Maria is being pushed in a shopping cart by her mother, while she digs through bins. Their apartment is full of garbage collected from the street. Maria can't even throw away the aluminum foil she wraps her snack in, just in case it's good for something else. Her mother's hoarding and mental illness foreshadows what will soon follow: she is unable to raise Maria. The items bury her under themselves, and Maria ends up in a foster home where she slowly forgets this difficult, yet emotional period of her childhood.
Saura Lightfoot-Leon and Jospeh Quinn / Photo: www.natturnercostume.com/hoard
Carmoon subtly shades the world of people on the fringes of society, who often create their own fairy-tale world to make reality more bearable. The director worked with bright colours and textures you can almost feel the smell of objects collected from the street. The contrast between the environment and Maria's relationship with her mother is strong. Perhaps the dramatic line is most intense when Maria is torn away from her mother. Fortunately, the Hoard doesn't want to make poverty look like anything other than what it is: stench, dirt and exclusion.
Jospeh Quinn / Photo: www.natturnercostume.com/hoard
However, Maria gets a chance for a better life. We are about 10 years later, the setting is still the suburbs of London, but a cleaner and tidier environment. Maria enjoys the carefree life of teenagers with her friend ((Deba Hekmat), exploring sex and love. Michael (Joseph Quinn), who also lived in the foster house for a short time as a child, arrives in this almost idyllic state. Michael triggers something in Maria, childhood pictures, smells come out from the shadow, force her to discover where she came from and what she has been repressing in herself in the past years.
Saura Lightfoot-Leon / Photo: Alpha Violet
In the mix of scenes that are sometimes touching and sometimes absurd, Michael loses himself a little, while Maria tries to find who the girl she once was. Grief makes its way, to which the boy tries in vain to connect, he is no more than a switch button. They communicate with each other in a childish, almost animalistic way, which reminds the viewer of many things, except love. Regardless, there is something touching and human about the relationship between the two of them, and therein lies the appeal of the film. Fortunately, Carmoon used the most elementary technique of film directing: instead of unnecessary sentences, she concentrated on human looks, movements, and small glances. In addition, she used strong images and instinctively felt something that glued the viewer to the screen.
Watch it on British Film Isntitute.
(Cover photo: The Upcoming)