The Sou­venir Part II – first-look review

“I want to show life as I imag­ine it; that’s what cinema’s all about,” Julie Harte tells her skep­ti­cal film school instruc­tors, who are express­ing doubts about the script she’s sub­mit­ted as her the­sis project. Her per­cep­tion of art’s pur­pose has altered dras­ti­cal­ly since she first enrolled at Rayn­ham Film School with the ambi­tion of doc­u­ment­ing the work­ing class in Tyneside.

But that’s under­stand­able – Julie isn’t the girl she was back then, swept off her feet by a charm­ing hero­in addict who entered her life like a hur­ri­cane and left it with sim­i­lar­ly dev­as­tat­ing effect. If Joan­na Hogg’s The Sou­venir was a film about the ebb and flow of a tox­ic rela­tion­ship, its oth­er half is about learn­ing to rebuild.

Pre­mier­ing in Director’s Fort­night (the first of Hogg’s films to play at the fes­ti­val), the sec­ond part of her cine mem­oir sees sev­er­al key play­ers return­ing, notably Hon­or Swin­ton Byrne as Julie and Til­da Swin­ton as her dot­ing moth­er Ros­alind. Richard Ayoade – a scene-steal­er in the din­ner par­ty sequence of the first film – also repris­es his role as the acer­bic film­mak­er Patrick, while a trio of actors (Char­lie Heaton, Har­ris Dick­in­son and Joe Alwyn) play the young men who drift in and out of Julie’s life in the wake of her boyfriend Anthony’s death.

The film picks up in the weeks fol­low­ing Anthony’s over­dose in the toi­lets of London’s Wal­lace Col­lec­tion. ​“I hope you’re going to stay here for a long time, as long as pos­si­ble dar­ling,” Julie’s moth­er tells her soft­ly as she retreats to her child­hood home and the safe­ty of her par­ents’ gen­tle embrace. It’s a rare depic­tion of a famil­ial rela­tion­ship not beset by tur­moil, but soon enough she has to return to Lon­don and the ghosts that live in the apart­ment she once shared with Anthony.

His absence looms large as Julie attempts to make sense of her grief, rec­on­cil­ing the man she loved with the real­i­ty of his addic­tion and untime­ly demise. It’s an uncom­fort­able, inevitable posi­tion, but Julie dis­plays a dri­ve and deter­mi­na­tion pre­vi­ous­ly absent as she drift­ed through life, coast­ing on her priv­i­lege. There are still moments that high­light her good for­tune, yet she doesn’t take it for grant­ed now she under­stands the fragili­ty that sur­rounds her.

Julie attempts to under­stand her loss through the recre­ation of images recog­nis­able from The Sou­venir, syn­the­sis­ing grief with the heavy-hand­ed approach of a stu­dent, but when she even­tu­al­ly finds her way, the results are breath­tak­ing; a late sequence is a trick mir­ror of sound and images, draw­ing from the past to make sense of the present.

If The Sou­venir Part II is Hogg’s most per­son­al film it is also her most ambi­tious, strad­dling genre and form to present a sto­ry about grief but not nec­es­sar­i­ly about griev­ing. Ques­tions of what com­pels us to make art – and what pur­pose art should serve – linger after the cred­its roll. It’s a beguil­ing work from a mas­ter of her craft that holds the art of film­mak­ing in its pierc­ing gaze, and speaks to an uncom­pro­mis­ing vision of what cin­e­ma can be with a lit­tle faith and imagination.

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