Unapologetic and unfiltered, Hoard is a bold coming-of-age psychodrama that tackles the mental strife of a young woman’s burgeoning sexuality after experiencing neglect. It is a brash, audacious and unfiltered debut film from Luna Carmoon, one that discusses the wounds that trauma inflicts, and the scars that form from generational mental illness with a compassion for the ugly truth of complicated love. Carmoon’s beautiful and odious character study premiered at Venice Film Festival in 2023 to a rapturous standing ovation, taking home the audience award and a nomination for Best Film at the festival.
The film is split into two timelines: 1984 and 1994. It opens in the earlier timeline, with a 6-year-old Maria (Lily-Beau Leach) nestled inside a shopping trolley, being pushed down a London street by her mother Cynthia (Hayley Squires). The trolley is piled high with the rubbish that they have pilfered from other people’s bins, yet Maria is proudly placed upon it. Cynthia has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which manifests in the literal hoarding of rubbish – keep your eyes peeled for the wondrous birds-eye slow pull that shows the extent of this hoarding – but Cynthia’s proudest hoard is her daughter. Because Hoard is, above all else, a story about misguided love. However, while Cynthia loves Maria, she cannot provide a healthy, hygienic environment for her and social services place Maria in foster care.
This idea of misguided love is exhibited more so as lust in the second timeline, where the now fostered Maria (Saura Proudfoot-Leon) begins a sexual relationship with a much older man Michael (Joseph Quinn). Michael is a former foster child and gets obsessed with Maria through their similarly lived experiences. The sexual energy between them is feral and a wholly new experience for Maria. But this affection from Michael brings the trauma that Maria experienced while with her mother back up to the surface. Maria, now living in a hygienic house with a loving foster mother, begins experiencing an emotional regression and starts hoarding like her mother did.
Comentarios