Memory: "The Souvenir" Review
"A shy but ambitious film student falls into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship with a charismatic but untrustworthy older man."
Written & Directed by: Joanna Hogg
Starring: Honor Swinton Byrne
Tom Burke
Tilda Swinton
Joanna Hogg's deeply personal The Souvenir is a hazy, almost dream-like trip through memories long plastered over. Memory is a funny thing, our timeline of events can be disjointed and often make little sense as we weave through experiences. Hogg takes us on a journey through her avatar, a spellbinding Honor Swinton Byrne as she navigates film school and an illicit romance with an older man. What has all the trappings of a more typical coming of age story very quickly turns into something more real, more raw. The youthful glow of fond memories sometimes become the harsher, even cold remembrance of the most pivotal point in a young woman's life.
It's hard to say or know how much of it is Hogg's own experience but that hardly matters. The journey itself is one that many of us can relate to, especially if you've been in a relationship with an older person. Swinton Byrne's Julie is swept up by a man a few years her senior and all of his toxic traits are easily dismissed because of the naivety of youth. It's a relationship that I often found difficult to watch because its something I've lived. Nothing as dire as what plays out on film nor as toxic but in dating a woman ten years my senior, I threw away a lot of my own identity. When you're as young as Julie is, or I was, it's easy to see everything you're partner's doing as for your own benefit. Before you're a fully formed adult, you think people older than you have it figured out. As Julie comes to find out, that's hardly the case.
Anthony (a repugnant Tom Burke) is so condescending to Julie and often rejects her thoughts and ideas outright. But when you're young, you often believe the people older than you have the answers to everything. That's why Julie's devotion to Anthony is so heartbreaking because when he does give her that one bit of reassurance or approval, it's like a drug. When you love someone and form your life to fit theirs, any bit of reciprocation is more than enough to sate you. It's not that your partner doesn't love you back, in many cases they do. But a narcissistic person can only really care about themselves in the end. There will be flourishes of love, a gift here, a compliment there, a moment of vulnerability for you to tend to them there. But what's brilliant about what Hogg does is that she weaves those latter moments in here and there until that's all Julie has. Anthony ends up destroying himself so profoundly through addiction that Julie is there to pick up his pieces. Where once her life was built around impressing him, she now exists to be his caretaker.
It's a feeling I know all too well. And one a young person is wholly unprepared for. The shock of seeing someone you thought had it together fall apart in a way that hurts you emotionally and mentally is jarring. Hogg's narrative flows in and out of scenes of Anthony slowly falling apart. He initially plays it off and continues to treat Julie like he knows best. So when he gives her an infection or shows up with bruises on his arms, it's never explained to you or Julie. You, the viewer, can put the pieces together. And on some level, Julie must be too. But when your partner, who seems to have it together, shows signs of harmful behavior to both you and themselves, you brush it off. "This is how all adults must be, I guess." is what you tell yourself. By the time your partner is on the floor, sobbing nonsensically after having destroyed the living room, you're so wrapped up in the toxicity of it all that you hold them and promise them it will be ok. Your own mental health be damned. I've never seen a film portray something like this so accurately.
I've mentioned the hazy narrative and leisurely pace but that's also a little unfair. The film is never slow. Hogg is simply presenting a shoe box of memories and unpacking them. She shoots in a way that's both so close yet every room is so expansive that it seems never ending. You're trapped in Hogg's memories with her. You think "this room is so big, I'll just go sit over here." but Anthony's presence is so suffocating whether he's in the room or not. Hogg often shoots the two of them on opposite sides of a wall. There's even a scene in bed where Anthony builds a wall of stuffed animals between the two. As the walls start to erode and Julie's identity becomes pulled in by Anthony's gravitational pull, the massive rooms become smaller and smaller. It's really quite breathtaking.
The sets were almost all built in a giant hangar and the hangar itself is the setting of the film's final moments. I don't want to give away too much but the hangar acting as a meta-textual narrative device for Julie is astonishing. Featuring one of the best fourth wall breaks I've ever seen, it's a heart stopping moment and one that most filmmakers would never be brave enough to attempt.
The other aspect Hogg nails is film school itself. She's able to mix the bemusement you feel from meeting people so full of themselves they fall into parody with the abject terror of pitching your ideas to a board of professors. Like the toxic relationship with an older partner, I've never seen film school captured quite like this. The conversations Julie finds herself in are often funny but never played like jokes. There's a dinner scene with Richard Ayoade that's so hysterically funny and it's because how honest he plays the character.
Film school is such a weird proposition. As someone who attended one, I never felt like I was learning much of anything about the craft or technique. I was constantly being told "no" or "that's not the way you should write your story." Almost every interaction Julie has with a professor is a variation of that. Older people, you think know everything, giving you arbitrary reasons as to why this won't work or that won't land. It's a bit of a hopeless feeling that I've never seen related back to me until The Souvenir. You often find that you're in the hands of bitter people who didn't quite make it and that you're destined for the same.
This didn't land with me in the immediate aftermath because I found it too cold, too distant. But in the days since, it's begun to sink deeper under my skin and I'm starting to realize just what a masterpiece Joanna Hogg has made with The Souvenir. The existential dread I've felt as the film unravels in my mind has been palpable. It's easy to view the film as distant but it's anything but. It's a filmmaker dissecting her memories and doing something that's kind of a small miracle: presenting said memories with the close, meaningful way as Julie would experience them in the moment while simultaneously allowing us to view them as distant, almost disturbing vignettes. This is an adult reckoning with her youth and forcing herself to come to terms with the toxicity of that youth. And for anyone who's had experiences even close to this, it's a gut punch. This is devastating stuff and easily one of the films of the year.
It's hard to say or know how much of it is Hogg's own experience but that hardly matters. The journey itself is one that many of us can relate to, especially if you've been in a relationship with an older person. Swinton Byrne's Julie is swept up by a man a few years her senior and all of his toxic traits are easily dismissed because of the naivety of youth. It's a relationship that I often found difficult to watch because its something I've lived. Nothing as dire as what plays out on film nor as toxic but in dating a woman ten years my senior, I threw away a lot of my own identity. When you're as young as Julie is, or I was, it's easy to see everything you're partner's doing as for your own benefit. Before you're a fully formed adult, you think people older than you have it figured out. As Julie comes to find out, that's hardly the case.
It's a feeling I know all too well. And one a young person is wholly unprepared for. The shock of seeing someone you thought had it together fall apart in a way that hurts you emotionally and mentally is jarring. Hogg's narrative flows in and out of scenes of Anthony slowly falling apart. He initially plays it off and continues to treat Julie like he knows best. So when he gives her an infection or shows up with bruises on his arms, it's never explained to you or Julie. You, the viewer, can put the pieces together. And on some level, Julie must be too. But when your partner, who seems to have it together, shows signs of harmful behavior to both you and themselves, you brush it off. "This is how all adults must be, I guess." is what you tell yourself. By the time your partner is on the floor, sobbing nonsensically after having destroyed the living room, you're so wrapped up in the toxicity of it all that you hold them and promise them it will be ok. Your own mental health be damned. I've never seen a film portray something like this so accurately.
I've mentioned the hazy narrative and leisurely pace but that's also a little unfair. The film is never slow. Hogg is simply presenting a shoe box of memories and unpacking them. She shoots in a way that's both so close yet every room is so expansive that it seems never ending. You're trapped in Hogg's memories with her. You think "this room is so big, I'll just go sit over here." but Anthony's presence is so suffocating whether he's in the room or not. Hogg often shoots the two of them on opposite sides of a wall. There's even a scene in bed where Anthony builds a wall of stuffed animals between the two. As the walls start to erode and Julie's identity becomes pulled in by Anthony's gravitational pull, the massive rooms become smaller and smaller. It's really quite breathtaking.
The sets were almost all built in a giant hangar and the hangar itself is the setting of the film's final moments. I don't want to give away too much but the hangar acting as a meta-textual narrative device for Julie is astonishing. Featuring one of the best fourth wall breaks I've ever seen, it's a heart stopping moment and one that most filmmakers would never be brave enough to attempt.
The other aspect Hogg nails is film school itself. She's able to mix the bemusement you feel from meeting people so full of themselves they fall into parody with the abject terror of pitching your ideas to a board of professors. Like the toxic relationship with an older partner, I've never seen film school captured quite like this. The conversations Julie finds herself in are often funny but never played like jokes. There's a dinner scene with Richard Ayoade that's so hysterically funny and it's because how honest he plays the character.
Film school is such a weird proposition. As someone who attended one, I never felt like I was learning much of anything about the craft or technique. I was constantly being told "no" or "that's not the way you should write your story." Almost every interaction Julie has with a professor is a variation of that. Older people, you think know everything, giving you arbitrary reasons as to why this won't work or that won't land. It's a bit of a hopeless feeling that I've never seen related back to me until The Souvenir. You often find that you're in the hands of bitter people who didn't quite make it and that you're destined for the same.
This didn't land with me in the immediate aftermath because I found it too cold, too distant. But in the days since, it's begun to sink deeper under my skin and I'm starting to realize just what a masterpiece Joanna Hogg has made with The Souvenir. The existential dread I've felt as the film unravels in my mind has been palpable. It's easy to view the film as distant but it's anything but. It's a filmmaker dissecting her memories and doing something that's kind of a small miracle: presenting said memories with the close, meaningful way as Julie would experience them in the moment while simultaneously allowing us to view them as distant, almost disturbing vignettes. This is an adult reckoning with her youth and forcing herself to come to terms with the toxicity of that youth. And for anyone who's had experiences even close to this, it's a gut punch. This is devastating stuff and easily one of the films of the year.
VERDICT
9/10
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