Hoard
Luna Carmoon’s challenging first feature examines childhood trauma, madness and the disorder of hoarding.
My low rating for this prize-winning first feature from Luna Carmoon should not be allowed to conceal the fact that Hoard is nevertheless memorable twice over. It not only reveals Carmoon to be a highly original and distinctive filmmaker with a voice of her own, but also provides Hayley Squires with her best role since Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake in 2016. Nevertheless, this is a long film (126 minutes) and, after being deeply impressed by its first quarter, I found myself increasingly alienated by everything that followed. These very mixed feelings stem from the fact that one can sum up Carmoon’s approach as one in which she opts to show rather than to explain: it works brilliantly when she portrays young Maria (Lily-Beau Leach) living with her mother Cynthia (that’s the role played by Squires) but not, in my case at least, when she moves on ten years or so to show us Maria in her teens, this role being well taken by Saura Lightfoot-Leon.
Carmoon plunges us into Maria’s childhood even before the film’s title comes up on the screen. The adult Maria is heard in voice-over as she looks back on her life, but we are given no background by way of her family history and, since what we see is from Maria's viewpoint, no attempt is made to define the exact nature or cause of the obsessive-compulsive disorder that is responsible for Cynthia's behaviour. It would seem that she is a single mother and we are quickly made aware of how, often taking Maria with her, she finds objects to bring home and hoard, be it by way of loading up trolleys with goods or pinching bags of discarded rubbish. The house itself (the locale is South London and the time the early 1980s) is piled high with this stuff which, rotting, is something for rats to feed on. Such an existence is likely to be well outside the experience of the audience and on film it might have seemed too exaggerated to convince. But, as Carmoon reveals this world to us filming it with an acute eye and a very individual style, she makes it feel wholly authentic as though what she is showing us is something known to her personally and which she has been able to re-create. For a first feature, it's something of a miracle.
Young Lily-Beau Leach is very convincing as the young Maria but the triumph that is on the same level as Carmoon’s in this segment of the film is that of Hayley Squires. She not only makes us believe in Cynthia's utterly unbalanced behaviour and in those moments of sharp disapproval when Maria has let her down but also conveys throughout the fact that Cynthia’s weird lifestyle exists alongside a deeply devoted love for her daughter. What is achieved here suggests that Hoard might turn out to be a masterpiece. But then Cynthia has an accident in the house which reveals the conditions there and in consequence Maria is promptly taken away to live with a foster mother. That's Michelle played by Samantha Spiro and we now quickly jump forward to 1994 and find the teenage Maria still living with her. It is now that Michael (Joseph Quinn) enters the story. He is 29 years old but has kept in touch with Michelle who had also been a foster mother to him and she gives him a room. Before long we become aware that the adolescent Maria has reached an age when on encountering men she is strongly aware of the sexual charge around them and Carmoon’s direction illustrates here her ability to convey images with a potent sense of sensuality, as witness a scene at a billiard table and the emphasis placed on preparing a cue. We soon find that Maria and Michael are being drawn to each other despite the fact that Michael has a pregnant girlfriend, Leah (Ceara Coveney), who is expecting him to marry her.
What follows – and it comprises more than half of the film – is a portrait of this relationship linked to the impact on Maria of learning that her mother is now dead. That her bizarre childhood should shape her in adult life is understandable enough but Carmoon opts to show us without comment the animalistic sexual connection that grows between her and Michael (in that role Quinn is excellent but the writing does little to explain fully the character that he is playing). Over and above aping the behaviour of matador and bull or throwing food over each other, the sexual rapport between these two even extends to consuming what appear to be human ashes and Maria wanting Michael to brand her with a hot iron. In time their bond leads Maria to echo the past by bringing home bags of rubbish. But all of this is so strange that the viewer feels distanced and is given no guidance as to how far this often-repulsive behaviour is meant to be akin to an inherited madness or is largely grounded in unusual forms of sex play that will be recognised by some.
Arguably Carmoon means her film to be challenging but, even so, she opts for a relatively positive conclusion in which, for reasons never made very clear, Maria comes to terms with her childhood acknowledging that grief may remain but recognising the love that Cynthia had had for her. For people who find all this relatable Hoard may indeed be a film of real distinction, but others may well share my regret and see this as a film that loses its way before the halfway point. Even then, nothing can take away the remarkable promise inherent in the childhood scenes and Hayley Squires unquestionably deserves awards for her performance.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Saura Lightfoot-Leon, Joseph Quinn, Hayley Squires, Samantha Spiro, Ceara Coveney, Cathy Tyson, Deba Hekmat, Lily-Beau Leach, Erin Jemmotte, Sandra Hale, Nabil Elouahabi, Alexis Tuttle, Sam John.
Dir Luna Carmoon, Pro Loran Dunn, Helen Simmons and Andrew Starke, Screenplay Luna Carmoon, Ph Nanu Segal, Pro Des Bobbie Cousins, Ed Rachel Durance, Costumes Nat Turner.
Erebus Pictures/Anti-Worlds/Delaval Film/BBC Film-Vertigo Releasing.
126 mins. UK. 2023. UK Rel: 17 May 2024. Cert. 18.