A young film student in the early ’80s becomes romantically involved with a complicated and untrustworthy man.
Joanna Hogg spent years putting this movie together. First, she had to live it, then let it coagulate in her mind until it became the story we’re presented with. Often times its bare-bones budget style of filmmaking reminded me of the lengthy Merchant-Ivory films. “The Souvenir” comes in and out of focus throughout its course as Hogg delivers us bit by bit this absurdly normal tale of two lovers, utterly wrenching our guts out even as we ruminate on the casually developed relationship the two find themselves in.
Tilda Swinton heads the cast in a secondary role. The true honor of carrying the film belongs to Honor Swinton Byrne (Tilda Swinton’s daughter) when she carries on the most honest acting. I read that Hogg did not give Honor a script, instead letting the other actors dictate the scene and leaving Honor to improvise her way through it. Tom Burke plays opposite Honor as Anthony, the cold diplomat. His domineering attitude wavered between outright cocky and politely disarming. It speaks to their performances that their relationship felt truly open and honest. They clearly sought out a truthful seed to grow into this complicated relationship.
We observe this relationship at its best and at its worst, but mostly at its most average. We see the casual days. We’re witness to days where the two just eat breakfast or where Julie (Honor) shows her film work to Anthony (Burke). We want to reach through the silver screen and shake Julie every time we see her lose herself in her relationship to Anthony. It’s so real and honest. We’ve all been there, losing ourselves in somebody and bending over backward to excuse their deeper flaws. Hogg mines such genuine scenes because she lived them. I can’t guess as to how one-for-one the real-life version of the tale is compared to its cinematic facsimile but if this is anything to go by, production design made Julie’s apartment look exactly like Hogg’s apartment back when she was in film school in her twenties.
I struggled to sit still during this movie. Whether we’re watching Anthony manipulate Julie or just the two of them eating breakfast together, this movie’s an inch at a time. The beauty of that edit pace is you never notice just how far this relationship has come until one extreme moment occurs, and reframes everything. Just in the way our love can creep up on us at the time this movie ingrains us with the characters from beginning to end. That being said, you might imagine my discontent as I latched on to any ounce of drama I could find. It speaks to the human need for conflict within the story and the fact I can not sit still and just enjoy the moment on screen. I appreciated that the story within developed significantly toward the end.
Its camerawork features a mélange of cinema styles. I think the film used three or four different film grains. It gave me the feeling that Joanna Hogg repurposed footage from her film school days, adding another layer of veracity to an already honest film. Lighting comes across almost entirely natural and sound feels very minimal: whispered conversations, spoons tinkling saucers, and soft kisses. I enjoyed this movie but felt weighed down by the film’s unwavering commitment to an honest depiction. In that sense, it succeeded thoroughly. I felt very situated in the real world. Unfortunately, real-life lags from time to time so I craved less meandering and a little more focus.
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