THE SOUVENIR II***** - BFI London Film Festival Day 3

Julie is grieving the death of her charismatic, controlling, deceitful boyfriend Anthony. She doesn't know if she misses who he was or just the companionship and intimacy of love. She expresses her grief in her student film, a memorial, or Souvenir, if you will.  And in making the film, she rediscovers her sense of fun and takes joy in her friendships. We leave her still aware that she is inchoate and waiting to find her voice, but optimistic. And we leave the film, conscious that writer-director Joanna Hogg, who has created this fictionalised version of her life in this film, has indeed voice her voice with this deeply felt, technically audacious, often hilarious, film.

Viewers who have not seen Hogg's previous film, THE SOUVENIR, may struggle to understand why Julie is so driven to capture her relationship with Anthony. Without Tom Burke's dominant presence, I feared that this sequel might lose its purpose, much as Julie feels unmoored at the start of the sequel. But as the film progresses we see Julie find her way, thanks partly to her unstintingly supportive if somewhat anachronistic parents (Tilda Swinton and a drily hilarious James Spencer Ashworth). She also progresses with her student film despite her supercilious film professors, but with the support of her best friend Marland (Jaygann Ayeh). Along the way there are moments of desperation - and searching for connection - and the lightest of touches with the tragedies of the 1980s when a gay editor reveals his boyfriend has been sick for a while.  Richard Ayoade also returns with a scene-stealing turn as an arrogant film student with dip-dyed hair. The problem is that he's not wrong in what he says! Julie should move on.

But what raises this film to a level beyond that achieved in the first part of THE SOUVENIR is Joanna Hogg's greater confidence in exploring the meta-textual nature of making a film about her own student film-making. I LOVE that the student film we finally see bears no resemblance to the verite-footage we have seen so far, but leaps into Fellini or Red Shoes ballet -esque surrealism. Bravo!

I also hope that Honor Swinton Byrne continues to act. She has a natural charisma and empathy that shines through the screen. I'd love to see what kind of range she has.

THE SOUVENIR II has a running time of 106 minutes and is rated R. The film played Cannes and the BFI London Film Festival 2021. It will be released in the USA on October 29th 2021 and in the UK on January 21st 2022.

SOUVENIR

THE SOUVENIR is writer-director Joanna Hogg's personal memoir of her time as film student in London in the early 80s and a love affair she had with a charming but dangerous older man.  Set largely in a meticulous recreation of Hogg's Knightsbridge flat, we are introduced to the fictionalised Julie (Honor Swinton Burne) as a naive, privileged, earnest and desperately vulnerable young woman.  At first, her relationship with Anthony (Tom Burke - finally finding a role to flex his muscles in) seems innocent enough, although the age gap is troubling, as is his domineering personality. But we, as Julie, as her parents, are lulled into a sense of complacency by his posh accent and apparent Foreign Office job. Soon we discover that all is not as it seems - earlier in fact than the alarmingly innocent Julie. It starts with him cadging a tenner, and ends with a kind of emotional domination and abuse, centred around a character twist that I won't reveal.  The tension of the film lies first in knowing whether Julie will gather the strength to leave Anthony, and second in whether her mother (played by Honor's real-life mother Tilda Swinton) will intervene.  

As in her previous, outstanding, films  - UNRELATED and ARCHIPELAGO - Joanna Hogg creates these wonderfully tense, nuanced, naturalistic chamber pieces where characters are trapped in seemingly ordinary conversations but so much is going on in their interior lives - so much is unsaid - and the stakes seem so high. Tom Burke is absolutely superb as Anthony, in the most difficult role of creating a character at once despicable, but also pitiable, who we have to believe is charming enough to be loved. Honor Swinton Burne is not called upon to show such range, but is convincing in playing a shy young woman. If THE CROWN needs to cast a shy young Diana they need look no further. And stealing the show, we have a deliciously funny cameo from Richard Ayoade with one of the most quotable lines in film. I'd repeat it here but it gives away too much plot!

Kudos to Joanna Hogg, whose idiosyncratic scripting and shooting style got the best out of a new actress and creates a slow-build tension and genuine emotional involvement in the lives of these characters.  One must also comment on how she captures particular visuals - a shot of the Grand Canal (perhaps one of the most hackneyed scenes and yet so beautiful and apparently fresh here) - or a disagreement in a hotel room that's so emotionally difficult to behold that we see it reflected in a mirror.  This film really is unique, disturbing, beautiful and melancholy.  I cannot wait to see the second part. 

THE SOUVENIR has a running time of 119 minutes and is not yet rated.  The film played Sundance 2019 where Joanna Hogg won Grand Jury Prize - World Cinema - Dramatic.  It will also play Berlin 2019. It does not yet have a US or UK release date.