Film: Hoard (dir. Luna Carmoon) at London Film Festival 2023

The makers of The Taste of Mango, a very moving documentary, after which my sister was in floods of tears (thanks, Chloe Abrahams), gave us all a rather cute mango pin as a keepsake. Started to think a souvenir from each film would be cool. Then I saw Hoard and thought, perhaps not!

Luna Carmoon's first feature, Hoard has been nominated for, and won, several awards. It doesn't flinch from the unpalatable and that's partly why it succeeds. Mind you, it's not for the faint-hearted, not to say it's gory - it's not Saw, but there are moments that will make you cringe or want to look away. But I think it's this way because it comes from the director's heart. She doesn't want to sugarcoat it. The lives are the lives of those of us who exist on the margins, outside convention, making up our own rules, creating our own codes.

First off, I’d like to say that, if any members of the audience/cast/crew, etc, really were from South East London, let’s hope that LFF stumped up for cars home or they would have had to hotfoot it out of there once the questions were over to climb the 78 steps to Waterloo East for the last train home. We got there and discovered the whole station was closed. 

Two of the films I saw at the Festival this year have had uncanny parallels to my real Grey Gardens* life. It was a bit mind-blowing.

My name is Chantal and I’m a hoarder.

Hostage to a frugal upbringing and a vivid imagination, my sister and I (just to make us even odder, we’re twins) were the original recyclers, finding a new purpose for everything. More likely to collect from skips than add to them. I remember that immortal line of Dad's: 'Don’t let Lyn look in the skip!' But then who puts teddies in skips? Lots of people it turns out.

But, after seeing Hoard, I hereby vow never to save another bit of used tinfoil. You know when you're thinking of collecting shiny, translucent, coloured sweet wrappers from your Quality Street or Roses chocolates to use to make Christmas decorations, don't. It’s a slippery slope and I’m already quite near the bottom. I will not pick up every lost toy in the street. [A month on I’ve taken a two-bus journey to pick up a teddy-bear that had been appearing on Freecycle for a month. A week on from that and sister has brought home a teddy as tall as I am from another skip. And don't even mention the panda! And that's not even the one I ended up taking to a friend's wedding because he was the last toy left at a jumble sale.] I blame my inclination to empathise with the inanimate as well as animate. It is incredibly difficult when you can see an alternative use or place for something and even harder when you don’t because then it’s down to you to adopt whatever mislaid, discarded item you come across. Of course, I know why I identify with the lost and/or unwanted. But knowing that doesn’t stop me.

The chaotic home environment in Hoard, as well as looking frighteningly like our house reminded me a little of the TV version of Jacqueline Wilson’s The Illustrated Mum,  brilliantly brought to life by Michelle Collins, Holliday Grainger and particularly, Alice Connor. This is a bit more than that and possibly a bit too much.

Before I go further, I have to admit that I have come back to review this a long time after seeing the movie as life got in the way (a cancer curveball) so I don't remember every character and trying to find them on IMDb ain't easy. Why aren't there more pictures?

In Hoard, the mother, Cynthia (brilliantly played by Hayley Squires) and daughter, Maria (Lily-Beau Leach) are everything to each other but Cynthia is a hoarder who sometimes loses touch with reality, or rather her reality is different from everyone else's. 

The world inside the home is in some ways, make-believe and magical but in others, a minefield. And as the child, Maria, grows older, the glitter starts to look tarnished and the home environment seems to be more a tawdry collection of other people’s rubbish than an enchanted kingdom of found treasure. It's also a lesson in how bit by bit, a situation worsens and you adapt to things like having to kick through piles of newspapers as you come in the door (at this point, I whisper to sis, ‘Better tidy up when we get home’). The disadvantages of this way of life start to outweigh the advantages. 

Hoarding is not the only issue here. Nor is it ever. It’s a symptom. There’s love too but it’s a selfish, excluding kind of love. We were too stupid as children to realise that ‘us against the world’ was not a battle we could win. Maria starts to understand too, that her life is not like other people’s and, just perhaps, it’s not as good. Sometimes children need stability and normality as well as excitement. 

You sense that something’s gotta give. Social workers become involved and Maria is removed from her mother's care and placed with a foster family, in which Samantha Spiro handles with aplomb the thankless task of being the responsible mother figure, Michelle.

Teenage Maria (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) has a wild friendship with kindred spirit, Laraib (Deba Hekmat). This madcap sorority of two seems to work although you sense that things could spiral out of control quite quickly. 

Then, a former foster son turns up, Michael (Joseph Quinn) and sets the cat among the pigeons. His involvement with Maria seems to turn into a pissing contest (though luckily only metaphorically as Michael would be an also-ran, you'll find out why when you see the movie) where they try to out-extreme each other. What was it they were spitting on and then licking up? Yuck.

Joseph Quinn* I first noticed in Howard’s End. Now normally I’m annoyed when the BBC wastes my licence fee on an adaptation that has already been pretty successfully realised as a film but I was totally won over by his portrayal of Leonard Bast. The exquisite torture of his embarrassment, his injured pride, over the lost umbrella. He was also in one of my favourite plays, Wishlist, playing second fiddle to the incredible Erin Doherty. And of course, there was Dickensian, in which he managed to invest his portrayal of Arthur Havisham with so many layers, that, although we should have despised him, we still felt sympathy with him.

The trouble with the Maria/Laraib, Maria/Michael relationships is that they're a little too similar. Saura Lightfoot-Leon is a find and she invests each step closer to looney with amazing, convincing gusto that makes what seems incredible, credible. She and Michael have a weird sort of magnetic attraction, that the actors make real for us. My caveat would be that sometimes it's hard to unravel the motivation for the action. But, you know, life's like that, families are like that. People do things and sometimes we never learn why. And sometimes we have to be ok with that.

Meanwhile, Cathy Tyson stole onto the screen to steal every scene as as Michelle's lascivious friend.

It's a wild-ish trip but one worth taking.

* Saw this a few years ago. A documentary on some eccentric relatives of Jackie Onassis. Sort of compelling.

* Has found fame or infamy in Stranger Things, which I haven't seen.