Exhibition

Writer-director Joanna Hogg exploded onto the British film scene in 2008 with Unrelated, a sneaky drama about a group of Britons holidaying in Tuscany. That and Archipelago (2010) were notable for their focus on the contemporary middle classes, a demographic that seldom appears in a national cinema dominated by corsets and kitchen sinks. But just when we had the film-maker pegged as the English answer to Eric Rohmer, along comes this odd film in the shape of a house.

You read that correctly. The house in question is a modernist marvel designed by the late architect James Melvin. Ostensibly, Exhibition is a film about two artists – D (Viviane Albertine) and H (Liam Gillick) – who decide to sell said house after living there for 18 years. Think Empty Nest Syndrome refocused on the nest.

The couple have their differences. H is inclined to be snappy when “making work”, D is reticent about her work as a performance artist. There are vague references to some past unpleasantness but we never do find out “what happened before”.

This isn't a narrative or drama. It's a kind of exhibit. The pair live as if performing for an unseen audience on the other side of their glass walls. D rehearses her performance art in the window. There's something of Pinter's The Dumb Waiter in the way H uses the intercom to summon D for sex. The way she tiptoes; the way she masturbates; everything about the couple's existence looks and sounds like conceptual art.

Explicit sofa sex aside, there's significantly less dramatic thrust to Exhibition than one find in recent conceptual crossovers Mr John and Museum Hours. Brief appearances by Tom Hiddleston's estate agent do not act as catalyst in terms of the film's eventfulness.

But we do worry, nonetheless, if these people will survive outside of the building that shaped them. They’re not so much characters as meaty extensions of their home, a human exhibit shaded by an immaculately appointed garden.

There is much to admire in Exhibition. Albertine, former guitarist with 1970s noiseniks The Slits, brings a fierce carnality to D. Former YBA and Turner Prize nominee Gillick exudes a gruff artistic temperament. Sound designer Jovan Ajder urban collage is impressively discombobulating.

But Hogg’s quietly ambitious film, like the characters it depicts, is a little too in thrall to the airless, deadened space of the house. As with D and H’s guests, we feel like we’ve been told to take off our shoes and tread oh-so-carefully.