Oh dear! What a mess!
There's little storyline to the whole thing. Four twenty somethings drop out and do the fourth way kind of gig on a country farm. Think, let's make a little free love commune, without all the hippy paraphernalia. There's little back story to anyone and not much exposition in general. Quite honestly director and co-writer Joanna Coates doesn't appear to have done the hard yards on this project at all.
Lots of repetition of scenes; lying around the farm yard, pretentious little group concerts and plays (burning cardboard coffins?) and nightly musical beds. Some ex-boyfriend drops in for a bit and then leaves in a huff and it all ends up with an orgy, that drags on for a few minutes, where we don't see much, because it's filmed in such extreme close-up.
Way back in 1969 Paul Mazursky directed a (kind of) similar-themed movie called Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. I never thought it was a particularly good film, though it was a resounding critical and commercial success. It had two big things going for it that Joanna Coates has completely ignored in her making of Hide & Seek. First it had some sort of story happening with its four main characters and second it had a sense of humour and didn't take itself too seriously.
The most interesting thing I can say about Hide and Seek is that Gemma Arterton's (one of my favourites) little sister Hannah, is one of the four "stars", all of whom had very little with which to work. One of them, Daniel Metz can take a certain portion of the blame for that too, as he co-wrote the very thin script with Coates.
There's little storyline to the whole thing. Four twenty somethings drop out and do the fourth way kind of gig on a country farm. Think, let's make a little free love commune, without all the hippy paraphernalia. There's little back story to anyone and not much exposition in general. Quite honestly director and co-writer Joanna Coates doesn't appear to have done the hard yards on this project at all.
Lots of repetition of scenes; lying around the farm yard, pretentious little group concerts and plays (burning cardboard coffins?) and nightly musical beds. Some ex-boyfriend drops in for a bit and then leaves in a huff and it all ends up with an orgy, that drags on for a few minutes, where we don't see much, because it's filmed in such extreme close-up.
Way back in 1969 Paul Mazursky directed a (kind of) similar-themed movie called Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. I never thought it was a particularly good film, though it was a resounding critical and commercial success. It had two big things going for it that Joanna Coates has completely ignored in her making of Hide & Seek. First it had some sort of story happening with its four main characters and second it had a sense of humour and didn't take itself too seriously.
The most interesting thing I can say about Hide and Seek is that Gemma Arterton's (one of my favourites) little sister Hannah, is one of the four "stars", all of whom had very little with which to work. One of them, Daniel Metz can take a certain portion of the blame for that too, as he co-wrote the very thin script with Coates.