With THE SOUVENIR, writer/director Joanna Hogg revisits her own past with this emotionally charged visual memoir through time, catapulting us into the emotional fray of a woman trying to discover (or invent) herself and her passions. Hogg never keeps us at arm’s length but rather, invites us into the mindset of Julie, a 20-something film student, fascinated by and falling in love with a seemingly worldly Andrew, while trying to distance herself from her upper-class life of privilege as she attempts to understand the struggle of poverty and the working class through a film project. Fascinating is that while Julie has spent her life at arm’s distance from the real world, Hogg immerses us in it.
Exploring themes of art versus life, first love, passive-aggressive toxicity, and a muscle memory look back to being someone in your 20’s in the 1980’s, Hogg delivers a film that is steeped in emotional authenticity and intimacy, making one feel as if a fly on the wall, silently privy to Julie’s emotional quest to find herself and define her life, presumably through boyfriend Anthony.
As almost every woman (and man) watching will attest, the handwriting is on the wall that Anthony is not what Julie perceives him to be. His veneer is thin, but Julie’s almost desperation for love clouds what should be a developing filmmaker’s eye. The intensity of the relationship between the two is palpable, often fraught with anxiety and even fear, but it is impossible to look away. The more emotionally intimate the film becomes, the more you want to turn away almost in embarrassment, but can’t. You look deeper and listen harder.
Compounding this intensity is Hogg’s casting, most notably with Tilda Swinton and Honor Swinton-Byrne. Making her true cinematic debut as Julie is Tilda Swinton’s own daughter, Honor Swinton Byrne (Swinton-Byrne was previously briefly seen 10 years ago in “I Am Love” with her mother.) with Swinton playing Julie’s mother. Their real life mother-daughter connection leaps off the screen and adds further gravitas to Swinton-Byrne’s performance. She is revelatory. Infusing Julie with a confused sensuality and naivete, she makes your heart ache as we suspect Anthony’s true nature while Julie exists with blinders on and in denial. This emotional memory of Hogg’s hinges on the performance of Tom Burke as Anthony and Burke delivers in spaces. Riveting performance. So intense and so detailed is the relationship between Julie and Anthony that one wonders where Hogg’s own memories and experiences begin and end.
Naturalistic in its tone and visuals, bringing this 1980’s world to life though falls on the work of production designer Stephane Collonge and cinematographer David Raedeker. Their collaborative work is exemplary, particularly given that the apartment in which Julie resides is built from the ground up and mirrors Hogg’s own apartment at that time. Photos and journal entries not only helped inform the characters and the performances, but the production design and cinematography. Images seen through the windows are actually slides taken by Hogg back in the day capturing her own views. Opting for a nostalgic grain, Raedeker imbues the film with period perfection, while creating an almost shroud-like pallor that adds to the emotional weight of Julie’s crossroads in life. Handheld lensing with shallow focus versus static long shots allows us to observe the intimacy of Julie’s relationship as well as the world around her. Outstanding is a dreamlike Venice sequence that dazzles.
Completing the immersion is the film’s sound design. Electing for no instrumental score but to celebrate the ambient sounds of life punctuated by and the film’s period-perfect needle drops, Hogg’s vision is sensorily complete.
Naturalistic and free-flowing, THE SOUVENIR is a dissection of life that time and distance have allowed Hogg, melding fact with fiction, to capture her own emotional impressions of the time rather than its accuracy while allowing her to reimagine her own life.
Writer/Director: Joanna Hogg
Cast: Honor Swinton-Byrne, Tom Burke, Tilda Swinton
by debbie elias, 05/10/2019
