A social realist psychodrama of amour fou here in this fiercely intense and often macabre tale from feature first-timer Luna Carmoon, showing how suppressed childhood trauma blossoms into a secret theatre of adult dysfunction and delusion, but it’s also a story in which Carmoon finds the possibility of redemption and escape. Hoard is all the more intriguing for being a very personal project for Carmoon, something made clear in what appears to be an analogue-video home movie clip over the closing credits.
In its study of loneliness and a kind of marooned and thwarted sexuality, Hoard is in some ways like early Ian McEwan such as The Cement Garden – although the lead character has conceived a bizarre obsession with Volker Schlöndorff’s movie The Tin Drum, particularly the scene of little Oskar Matzerath’s sexual awakening in the form of spitting into a handful of sherbet.
