The opening scene has birds merrily singing in the background and you settle yourself down for what you hope will be a treat to the eye and a "Festen" style family bust-up. What you actually get for the next interminable 2 hours is extended shots of scenes out of which the characters have disappeared some minutes before - the characters having said very little or nothing - and moody landscapes with birds singing or wind blowing (Blow-Up anyone?). There is a 2 minute shot (although it felt like 10) of the cook stumbling over some rocks out of a cave. Why? Were we to assume she had some kind of illicit assignation with Edward? I don't know and after an hour I couldn't have cared less if they had all fallen into a threshing machine.

I thoroughly sympathised with the father who only appears on the end of the phone who, quite wisely, makes up excuses for not being able to make it down to this family holiday. I wished I had made up any excuse NOT to have seen this film.

" As regards Edward's holiday (in which Hiddleston appears more introspective and idealistic),Tuscany's radiant sunlight and historical cathedral are supplanted by chilling coast wind and bleached craggy hills. Edward's family isn't really behind his noble cause, compounded by an absent father, ARCHIPELAGO is essentially an attack on the middle class's blinkered conceit and ingrown snootiness, the latter is also perceived through the character of Rose (Lloyd),a working-class cook. A restaurant contretemps cringingly divulges how entitlement can be abused, and when Cynthia eventually blows a fuse (you only hear her ranting),she does it obliquely, not directed to Edward but to Patricia, with the former within the earshot. But Cynthia's resentment feels ungrounded which could be a problem owing to Hogg's style of abstraction, audience needs a larger context and more information to relate to it."

read my full review on my blog: Cinema Omnivore, thanks.

I saw this film some weeks past and I was most taken with its cinematic beauty and disturbing undercurrent of family relations in a 'privileged class' family.

As an American I can see this story as conflicts not just in this one family we see but in the entire class system found in Britain and to some degree here in the US. I believe the pivotal scene in this story is found when Christopher wants to invite the cook/housekeeper to eat dinner with them because it's the polite thing to do. His sister will have none of this and takes offense at the very suggestion. The mother is undecided but agrees with her daughter. Christopher asks why not and no valid reason can be given other than its inappropriate for staff to eat with family. When Christopher offers to help clean up the table and dishes the housekeeper ask "What am I suppose to do, this is my job". She too is an island.

The family here cannot communicate between themselves nor with those they see as beneath them. Like it or not there is a separation between classes in society and family members. Like an Archipelago it's all one unit but we are our own island.

Here we see just one interpretation of this human problem. And beautifully told.