The Souvenir, 2019.
Directed by Joanna Hogg.
Starring Honor Swinton-Byrne, Tom Burke, Tilda Swinton, Jack McMullen and Richard Ayoade.
SYNOPSIS:
A young woman struggles to achieve her film school ambitions while in a destructive relationship with an older man.
There’s always a lot of talk online – particularly in the world of morally questionable superhero fanboys – about how film criticism is somehow supposed to be “objective”, as if any piece of art could ever be judged based on a generic list of criteria. I mention that point because, if I were to review Joanna Hogg’s much-heralded Sundance hit The Souvenir based purely on a dispassionate assessment of its cinematic quality, I’d have to conclude that it’s pretty darn good. But if the words of Roger Ebert about movies being “a machine that generates empathy” are true, then Hogg’s film simply didn’t work for me.
It’s a personal story for the British director, with Honor Swinton Byrne’s protagonist Julie a loose analogue for the filmmaker herself. She’s at film school, pondering making a movie about a Northern working class community, miles outside of her privileged Knightsbridge existence. She meets Foreign Office employee Anthony (Tom Burke) and they begin a relationship, though it soon becomes clear that he is “a habitual heroin user” – as his friend Patrick (Richard Ayoade) puts it. This puts a strain on their burgeoning romance.
The Souvenir is, for the most part, a film in which posh people talk to each other about nothing much while sitting in opulent rooms. It’s a world in which almost every struggle can be solved by a handout from the parental purse. Indeed, the entire narrative role of Tilda Swinton as Julie’s mother – playing alongside her real daughter – seems to be to dole out cash as and when it’s needed. The movie exists in a world that, for those without the privilege of the characters, feels like a fantasy realm as distant as the galaxy far, far away in Star Wars.
There’s no doubting the quality of Hogg’s filmmaking. Her film is visually impressive and very well-acted by the cast, so by any objective list of critical criteria, it has to get a pass. However, the austere visual palette has something of a distancing effect, compounding the privilege that permeates every frame and holding the audience – or at least this audience member – at arm’s length. For a film that relies on viewers empathising with its protagonist, it takes a curiously cold, distant approach.
The story itself is disjointed and meandering, as if a half-remembered recollection of the characters’ lives. Similarly, monumental events in the story happen off-screen or are suggested by furtive glances. It’s the sort of subtlety that rewards an audience that is on board with the characters but, in this case, it only serves to further separate the apparent warmth of the central relationship from the audience being asked to invest in that bond.
Hogg’s direction is never less than elegant and The Souvenir certainly feels like the work of a director with a clear vision. However, there’s no getting away from how chilly and exclusionary it is – a story that seems to take place in a hermetically-sealed world cordoned off from reality, with only occasional attempts to ask questions about what all of that means. Presumably, the film is supposed to have plenty to say about toxic relationships, but it’s buried under such a thick treacle of privilege that I found it impossible to engage. It’s not you, Joanna – it’s me.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★
Tom Beasley is a freelance film journalist and wrestling fan. Follow him on Twitter via @TomJBeasley for movie opinions, wrestling stuff and puns.
