The Sou­venir – first look review

One of the most mag­i­cal things about film fes­ti­vals is the prospect of dis­cov­ery and, in turn, how the inten­sive pro­gramme of movie-watch­ing makes you real­ly appre­ci­ate a tru­ly great film when you see one. Joan­na Hogg’s fourth fea­ture, The Sou­venir, feels like exact­ly this kind of gem –an inti­mate object of artistry, beau­ti­ful­ly craft­ed in every sense, and pro­pelled by a beguil­ing per­for­mance by a new­com­er to the screen.

This might not come as a total sur­prise to those who have fol­lowed Hogg’s career since her 2007 debut, Unre­lat­ed, which fea­tured a rel­a­tive­ly-unknown Tom Hid­dle­ston, who went on to star in her next two films, Arch­i­pel­ago and Exhi­bi­tion. In The Sou­venir, it’s Hon­or Swin­ton-Byrne at the heart of the sto­ry in her first lead role, appear­ing along­side her real-life moth­er, Til­da Swinton.

Based on Hogg’s own com­ing-of-age in Lon­don, the film focus­es on Julie (Swin­ton-Byrne), a priv­i­leged film stu­dent liv­ing in 1980s Knights­bridge. At a par­ty she meets the mys­te­ri­ous Antho­ny (Tom Burke), and the pair soon become roman­ti­cal­ly entan­gled, with Julie falling hope­less­ly for Antho­ny despite his fre­quent unsavoury behaviour.

Despite the deeply per­son­al ori­gins of the nar­ra­tive, it’s intrigu­ing how unknow­able Julie is as a char­ac­ter, as Hogg keeps us at arm’s length. And the more she does, the more we’re drawn in, des­per­ate to under­stand the intri­ca­cies not only of Julie her­self, but her fas­ci­na­tion with Antho­ny, despite his many faults.

Richard Ayoade also proves a high­light as a friend of Julie and Anthony’s, who seems to catch on to the strange­ness of their rela­tion­ship long before the cou­ple them­selves do. The act of see­ing is a com­mon thread, through the lit­er­al (Julie’s prac­ti­cal study of film) to the way Hogg frames her actors, most often in wide shots, as though they are the sub­jects of still life paintings.

The spir­it of the 1980s is evi­dent both in the sound­track (Bron­s­ki Beat, The Spe­cials and The Psy­che­del­ic Furs all fea­ture) and pol­i­tics of a film that wres­tles with notions of class priv­i­lege and blos­som­ing female desire, as well as ideas about ​‘female art’ and the female artist as per­ceived by men. A wry wit sparkles through­out, and means that when the heartache even­tu­al­ly comes it does so with real emo­tion­al impact.

Most intrigu­ing­ly of all, it has already been announced that The Sou­venir will receive a sequel – Hogg is cur­rent­ly work­ing on the script, and Robert Pat­tin­son is set to co-star with Swin­ton-Byrne, repris­ing her role as Julie. It feels as though this film bare­ly scratch­es the ser­vice of its fas­ci­nat­ing cen­tral char­ac­ter, and and it’s tru­ly excit­ing to have a film­mak­er as hon­est and artic­u­late as Hogg work­ing today.