Luna Carmoon’s feature debut, Hoard, opens in 1984 on Cynthia (Hayley Squires): a young single mother with long dark hair, donned in a fur coat and a black jewelled cap. She is bin-dipping with her seven-year-old daughter, Maria (Lily-Beau Leach), putting their findings in an old shopping trolley. One would think they were homeless, but the truth is that they have a home and Cynthia is a hoarder. Their house is dirty and covered with junk, leaving hardly any floor space, while decorations made out of rubbish hang from the ceiling. Cynthia calls it a “catalogue of love.” Maria squeezes out the door to and from school each day, and when she returns, Cynthia examines her lunch box to make sure she’s brought home her rubbish. She tells Maria they can put the orange peels in the oven like on Blue Peter and use them as decorations, but she becomes frantic when she thinks Maria hasn’t brought home her tinfoil.
The production design by Bobbie Cousins is spectacular. The mise-en-scene, alongside the action and dialogue, create distinct scenes and memorable imagery, which make up Maria’s core childhood memories. Scenes where they sit for dinner in kimonos with towels wrapped around their hair feel magical from Maria’s point of view. The British schools and nursery rhymes evoke a bittersweet nostalgia. Naming baby rats that live in the house “salt and vinegary” and “chip butty” is cute but alarming. There’s a lot of grotesque imagery, too, such as rat kings and copious amounts of spit. A large amount of love is displayed in such a revolting environment, creating a striking juxtaposition. Carmoon and Cousins have a sharp eye for detail, especially in the unconventional, which allows for an authentic on-screen experience. Carmoon is an auteur in the making.
Such an intriguing build up comes to a distressing halt when, half an hour into Hoard, Cynthia has a fatal accident in her home, resulting in Maria moving into a foster home. The film then jumps to 1994, where a teenage Maria (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) is finishing up school and still living with her foster mother, Michelle (Samantha Spiro). She has a best friend called Laraib (Deba Hekmat), whose father sends her away as punishment for bad behaviour, leaving Maria alone to spiral. But then she meets Michael (Joseph Quinn), a 29-year-old garbage collector who evokes a familiar stench of garbage and trauma to Maria. Michael was a “crack baby,” who was also fostered by Michelle, and is staying while he finds a home for him and his pregnant girlfriend, Leah (Ceara Coveney).
Maria begins to unravel when she and Michael develop an intense connection and engage in strange, animalistic behaviour. They play bull and bullfighter, throw food at each other, and eat a concoction of each other’s spit. A lot of their behaviour is playful and sexual, but also absurd as Maria embarks on a journey of raw and self-destructive grief, finally hit by the weight of her mother’s death. Many things take Maria back to her childhood, evoking previously repressed memories that she gets lost in. Wanting to reconnect with her mother, Maria starts bin diving, rubbing chalk on her face to stimulate her mother’s comfort, and recreating different situations with Michael.
While many things can be inferred, nothing in the film is explained. Carmoon prefers not to tell, but to aggressively show, a sought-after skill in filmmaking, but she does herself a disservice by leaving too much without commentary. We don’t know anything about Cynthia’s life, not how she became a single mother or why she developed hoarding disorder. The first act of Hoard is the strongest, while the rest of the film meanders, winding through Maria’s grief and madness. This is perhaps intentional as to reflect Maria’s wildering journey, which is effective in that regard, but it stands out against the exceptional filmmaking in the first act, leaving us feeling as lost as the protagonist. I cannot decide whether I love this aspect or hate it. It will work for some, but not others, as will the morally grey relationship between Maria and Michael. The film does find strength again during its climax when Maria witnesses an event that causes her to further reckon with her pain.
The performances by Squires and Lightfoot-Leon are remarkably strong, both portraying deep emotional pain convincingly. Despite not getting a backstory for Cynthia (we know as much as Maria knows), her character is written and performed with so much depth that you feel like you know her. Her love for Maria is admirable, shown in trying to create magical moments for her, which Cynthia puts a lot of effort into. When Maria is toppled over by her grief, madness explodes out of her, and her behaviour is both bewildering and understandable. Grief and mental illness are heavy, often something we wish we could put down, but can’t. Leach plays a young Maria successfully, allowing her world with Cynthia to feel believable. Michael is someone stuck in old patterns, unable to grow up and take responsibility as his attachment to Maria reverts him back to his own trauma. Quinn handles his character well, but he is unfortunately an underdeveloped part of the screenplay.
Hoard is such an incredibly unique experience, but it’s not a comfortable one. It shows the ugly parts of trauma and grief, which seep from the screen, in both a touching and haunting excavation of memory. In a voiceover during the film’s final moments, Maria says, “I’ve come to realise grief will never heal over time. It simply disguises itself in things,” which is one of the most striking lines in the film. It perfectly encapsulates the feeling of grief and the film’s exploration of it. Carmoon’s screenplay balances its many tonal mixtures exceptionally well. It flits from serious and sad, to sweet and mad, and just plain gross, but humour is threaded throughout. The pacing is decent, but it does feel a tad long at just over two hours.
Carmoon is a very compelling filmmaker and there is no telling she will go far in her career if she continues to develop what is already a largely promising level of skill and talent. It’s clear that many people who grew up in weird homes in England will be able to deeply resonate with what’s on show here. I honestly haven’t been able to stop thinking about Hoard since I saw it. It’s highly impacting and poignant, the type of film that you will get more from upon every watch. A must-see!
Hoard will be released in select US cinemas on September 6th. The film was released in UK cinemas in May and is available to buy or rent on VOD.
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