The Souvenir is a beautifully shot, mesmerizing snapshot of director Joanna Hogg's past


A still from The Souvenir. Agatha A. Nitecka, Courtesy of A24

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In the early 1980s, future writer/director Joanna Hogg was a 20-something film student in London; her 1986 short Caprice, made at the National Film and Television School, starred childhood friend and fellow Gen Xer Tilda Swinton. Hogg was also, as young people are wont to, in a relationship that was not entirely healthy.

Fast-forward almost 40 years. Hogg has just made her fourth feature, The Souvenir, starring a millennial first-time actor named Honor Swinton Byrne. She plays Julie, a 20-something film student in London in the early 1980s. Julie’s mother is played by the actor’s mother, Tilda Swinton. Julie falls into a relationship that is not entirely healthy, but you knew that already.

You could get lost in the echo chamber of parallels between life and art, but you’d do better to just get lost in the film, which won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance this year. From the opening scene at a flat party, Swinton (the younger) presents a mesmerizing portrayal of a young woman trying to figure out her place in the world. She’s certain she wants to be a filmmaker, but she lacks confidence, and fears her upper-class upbringing will prevent her from digging into grittier stories.

Enter Anthony (Tom Burke), a few years her senior, and some kind of foreign-office bureaucrat. Their courtship is mannerly, more cordial than passionate, but it’s clear that Julie feels drawn to this worldly fellow. And if he sometimes talks down to her ever so slightly – well, he’s been around the block, so perhaps it’s all right. You can already sense her making excuses for him, the way we sometimes do when we’re in love.

But soon Julie starts to notice even more things amiss. In bed one night, she catches sight of a bruise on his arm, and asks how it happened; he says he doesn’t recall. Then there’s a scene where he’s going out for a walk and asks her to lend him a couple of quid. “How much?” she asks, unconcerned. Six, he decides. Then: “Have you got 10?”

Some time later, her flat is burgled. A mutual friend makes a pointed remark at dinner. But it’s a while before she puts the pieces together, and longer still until she chooses to focus on the picture the pieces make.

The Souvenir is named after an 18th-century painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard that makes an appearance in the film; it shows a young woman carving initials into a tree. But this is also Hogg’s souvenir, her remembrance of things past; Julie’s apartment is a faithful recreation of the director’s former home, and there are historical signposts such as her typewriter, physical film editing, Elvis Costello on the soundtrack, and a terrorist bomb that explodes nearby.

In this sense, The Souvenir functions as an intensely personal document. But its themes of young love, growth of identity, and education (both in the personal and professional sense) make this a story that’s easy to access, and simple to slip inside. And despite the rather final nature of the closing scenes (so beautifully shot!), Hogg is apparently at work on a sequel. Because life goes on.