Mubi Monday: The Souvenir: Part II (2021)

If you look around for just a few seconds then you will find numerous glowing reviews of The Souvenir: Part II, the filmic continuation to the semi-autobiographical film from Joanna Hogg, The Souvenir. This is not one of those glowing reviews. Frankly, the number of critics hailing this as a modern classic is baffling to me. But maybe this just isn't my thing, which I suspected after also not enjoying the first part as much as many others did.

Honor Swinton Byrne once again plays Julie, a young woman now trying to move on with her life after the death of someone she was in a relationship with. Julie decides to try and process her feelings on this matter through the graduation film that she still has to make, asking people to play out certain key moments in ways that may allow her some sense of catharsis. Characters discuss the mingling of art and fiction, everything feels very precious and pretentious, and it's a real slog to get to the end.

I don't believe for one second that anyone will care about my opinion on this film. And I'm absolutely positive that both writer-director Hogg and her leading lady have moved on to other projects already, other artistic endeavours worthy of their time. So this review, as negative and contrary to so many others, is really just for my benefit. It allows me a bit of space to vent. I didn't expect to like this, but I was certainly willing to give it the benefit of the doubt (as I do with every film). The fact that it squandered a great opportunity, with most of the more interesting points hidden behind a veil of navel-gazing and vague pontification, makes it even more frustrating than the first instalment.

Not that Hogg isn't entitled to craft her movie however she likes, of course, and I assume that this is the way she wanted everything to turn out. It's just that what feels like a personal form of therapy through film doesn't, in my view, resonate with many people who will end up watching it. Whether or not it is true, everyone onscreen feels annoyingly privileged, as well as being in the very earliest stages of any career that they want to have in film. That combination makes so much of what we see happening here just tiresome, at best, and massively out of touch with many viewers. This isn't cinema as an escape, it's not cinema as a filter through which to view reality, it's cinema as a nicely-dressed window. This is the filmic equivalent of a humblebrag social media post, and there's rarely anything of real value in a humblebrag social media post.

I like seeing Richard Ayoade, and his scenes are the absolute highlight of this, but nobody else makes a very good impression here, not even the might Tilda Swinton, acting in a couple of scenes with her daughter. As for "Swinton Jr.", I think it's worth waiting to see how she works with stronger material. She's ultimately just too passive here, a blank avatar. Despite being a representation of Hogg herself, the writer-director seems much less interested in her than in showing the fragmented and meandering process to actually get a film made.

I doubt this review will put off anyone who is already set on seeing the film, but it's here anyway, for better or worse. Maybe one day someone will accidentally stumble upon this and agree with me. I won't be holding my breath though.

3/10

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Mubi Monday: The Souvenir (2019)

Written and directed by Joanna Hogg, The Souvenir is an interesting and intelligent look at the blinkers some people can so easily put on while in a relationship with someone they are deeply in love with. It's also quite poorly handled, surprising considering the amount of praise it received when initially released.

Honor Swinton Byrne plays Julie, a film school student who ends up sliding into a relationship with Anthony (played by Tom Burke). Anthony works for the Home Office. It also turns out that he's a heroin addict, but the kind of heroin addict who can continue to charm and fool many people around him, even as his behaviour gets worse and worse. Those people do exist, and Hogg may have even known someone exactly like Anthony (considering the fact that the film feels pretty semi-autobiographical throughout), but it's an important stumbling block between the viewer and the events unfolding onscreen.

The performers all do well here, with Swinton Byrne especially arresting in a debut lead performance that is nigh-on impossible to discuss without considering how well she could follow in the footsteps of her mother (Tilda Swinton, who also appears here, playing . . . Swinton Byrne's mother). Burke tries his best, despite the script working against him, and there are decent little turns from Swinton and one or two others, including an all-too-brief turn from Richard Ayoade.

Hogg observes the ups and downs of the central relationship with her usual care. This is the clean, almost sterile, world of the upper classes, where even drug addiction doesn't automatically lead to squalor and grime. In fact, good grief, viewers are only ever shown the behaviour caused by the drug-taking, never the act itself. Is that because Hogg never saw it? Or is it because she wants to allow her viewership to believe they are seeing a peek into a whole other world without ever actually showing them anything that might make them genuinely uncomfortable? Sadly, it feels like the latter, which is a great shame, especially when she has onscreen characters discussing the way they view the world from a position of great privilege.

Perhaps I am being a bit too harsh here, you could argue that I am getting my hackles up as I spy some class warfare skirmish that is never present. You could also argue that those who have more money, or access to more money, can always function better while addicts than those who are poor. But that's kind of the point. Hogg may be writing what she knows, but this could have easily been given a bit more work to resonate with so many other people. Add some more troublesome incidents. Add a lot of interference and undisguised loathing from those looking on. Add texture to let viewers know that even the bubble of class doesn't protect people completely from the greatest damage that such self-harming vices can cause.

As I said, however, the performances here are very good. Swinton Byrne is a riveting presence, and I look forward to whatever she does next. The look and feel of the movie is also very good, for what it is. The biggest problem is the script, and it's a problem that none of the other elements can quite distract you from for more than a few minutes at a time.

5/10

You are welcome to buy the movie here.