{"id":14595,"date":"2014-10-05T08:04:23","date_gmt":"2014-10-05T15:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=14595"},"modified":"2014-10-05T08:05:38","modified_gmt":"2014-10-05T15:05:38","slug":"hide-and-seek-film-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/hide-and-seek-film-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Hide and Seek — Film Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hide and Seek<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Directed by Joanna Coates<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This film is a cross between summer camp, group therapy, and pornography.\u00a0\u00a0 Written by Daniel Metz and Joanna Coates, who are married to each other, perhaps it is a response to marriage.\u00a0 This fantasy of four young people isolated in a pastoral setting, all having sex together and playing children’s dress up games to act out the conflicts in their lives is partly idealistic and mostly escapist.\u00a0 The characters, except for Charlotte (Hannah Arterton), have no past and no connection to the outside world.\u00a0 Nobody works; they are presumably a group of independently wealthy young actors.\u00a0 It is not clear how they came together for this adventure in sex and self exploration, but it is clear that they do not know each other at the beginning, and are very uptight and uneasy with one another.\u00a0 They like to create structure for their interactions.\u00a0 They schedule who sleeps with who, they create performances for each other, they dress up in costumes and play role games like kids.\u00a0 But they have sex like people in their 20s.\u00a0 The sex is pretty good in this film.\u00a0 There is one scene where one of the males is laying sideways across a bed with full erection masturbating.\u00a0 Charlotte comes into the room and unexpectedly finds him in thrall, then quietly stands and watches.\u00a0 It’s hot.<\/p>\n

The film is rather slow moving, but then, it is not going anywhere.\u00a0 It doesn’t really develop very much, nor do any of the characters, with the exception of Charlotte.\u00a0\u00a0 Charlotte is the only one with an explicit connection to the outside world and her own past.\u00a0 She brings an ex-boyfriend to the farm to stay for a few days, apparently without an advance notice to any of the others in the group.\u00a0 Simon (Joe Banks) shows up as a surprise and takes up an uneasy residence.\u00a0 He is not well received by the group and his appeal to Charlotte to return to him fails.<\/p>\n

The scene I liked best from the film was an enactment of a funeral for Simon that the four did after his departure.\u00a0 They put an effigy in a makeshift casket, solemnly carried it outside and ceremonially burned it.\u00a0 This was very good because it illustrates very well what you need to do when you break up with someone.\u00a0 You have to have a funeral and burn the body of the deceased ex-lover, creating visible finality.\u00a0 It makes that person psychologically dead — in your mind — and allows you to move on and open yourself to new possibilities.\u00a0 It is very important to be able to do that.<\/p>\n

I saw this at the Mill Valley Film Festival and afterward they had a Q&A with Daniel Metz and Rhea Mole, who played Leah in the film.\u00a0 I asked Daniel to explain the relationship between the title, Hide and Seek<\/em>, and the film.\u00a0 He gave a rather lame response about the allusion the game Hide and Seek makes to childhood and how it resonates with the childlike play of the group depicted in the film.\u00a0 OK, but that is a very oblique connection.\u00a0 The content of the film doesn’t really relate to the performance of Hide and Seek as a childhood game.\u00a0 I think titles are important and this title could use a little more imagination.<\/p>\n

This film is a little reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman in its introspection, but it is far less dreary.\u00a0 Bergman’s characters are depressed and self absorbed.\u00a0 These characters have a genuine emotional and psychological connection to one another, despite the fact that they use role playing games for much of their communication.\u00a0 \u00a0Active, satisfying sex also gives them strong emotional bonds and a pervasive \u00a0underlying spirit of good will and mutual interconnection.<\/p>\n

There is a lot that could be criticized about this fantasy and its viability as a lifestyle.\u00a0 Particularly, since this film isolates the four from most connection to the larger society.\u00a0 It is those outside connections that create stresses and pressures that often derail such alternative lifestyle experiments.\u00a0 This film also does not deal with who these people are in terms of their development as persons, where they came from, and why and how they gravitated toward this exotic experiment with a group of strangers.\u00a0\u00a0 The internal dynamics driving each of them as individuals is left unexplored, and those forces would undoubtedly impact the outcome of such an experiment.<\/p>\n

One thing I would judge positive about the film is that its portrayal of the characters and their lifestyle is ultimately optimistic.\u00a0 It does not end with failure and breakup and estrangement.\u00a0 All four of them remain committed to the group of four, despite an array of assaults, both internal and external.\u00a0 They feel it is a rewarding, enriching, happy experience and at the end they are staying together.\u00a0 I don’t know if that counts as happily ever after, but it is an upbeat, positive judgment.\u00a0 The film puts forward an interesting, unusual alternative lifestyle and presents it sympathetically.\u00a0 It leaves a lot to be desired in the execution, but I am in accord with its spirit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hide and Seek Directed by Joanna Coates       This film is a cross between summer camp, group therapy, and pornography.\u00a0\u00a0 Written by Daniel Metz and Joanna Coates, who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[837],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-joe-cillo"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"