"The Souvenir Part II" -- Movie Review

This weekend at The 59^th New York Film Festival, I attended the North American Premiere of the new United Kingdom drama, “The Souvenir Part II”, by Joanna Hogg. 

Synopsis

Following the death of her lover, can a young artist recover and turn her pain into creative expression?

Story

After the death of her boyfriend, Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) is deeply distraught.  His death was not a total surprise, though – he was a drug addict, but it seems that in the end, he may have taken his own life.  She leaves the London apartment she shared with him and stays with her parents for a while as she emotionally heals.  Eventually, she realizes that it’s time to get on with the rest of her life – she returns to London to live in her old apartment as well as to finish her studies at film school.  She’s in her final year and hopes to graduate by making her student film – but her proposal is running into problems with the school committee.   

When Julie presents the screenplay for her final film to the committee of teachers, it is not met with great enthusiasm – in fact, the response is one of anger, disappointment and hostility.  They feel that having read her previous scripts over the years, this is far from her best work.  It is too experimental for a student who looks to graduate – she should stick to something more traditional, they believe.  While they don’t have the final say over whether she makes the film as written in the screenplay, they do make it clear to her that if she does go ahead with shooting this script, the school will not fully support the effort.    

Julie does in fact proceed with making a film from the screenplay exactly as it was written in the script.  She soon finds out, however, that doing so is not going to be quite as easy as she had originally imagined it would be.  For one thing, the actors have difficulty with the script and in following her direction.  Also, with Julie’s frequent changes in camera angles and scheduling of the shoots, there is a bit of a mutiny with the crew and some of them threaten to quit the production, which of course would delay things considerably.  With all of this hanging over her head – not to mention the questions she still has about her boyfriend’s death – will Julie be able to finish her film in time to graduate?

Review

Part One of “The Souvenir” was previously reviewed here two years ago.  The second part of this movie is not much better – in fact, it’s worse.  How Hogg expects average people to sympathize with problems of the wealthy is hard to fathom.  This sequel suffers from the same issue as the first in the sense that it’s narcissistic self-indulgent elitist drivel; these characters seem so cold and distant – not to mention incredibly rich – that it is hard to relate to any of them.  Apparently, we are supposed to feel sorry for Julie and root for her character despite her white privilege.  To the filmmakers, a resounding “Spare me!” is the only reasonable reply. 

The pretentious nature of both parts of “The Souvenir” is particularly offensive.  After all, this character of Julie is not necessarily pursuing the most noble of professions – she’s going to film school and living in a duplex apartment in the heart of London during the 1980’s.  Oh, and by the way, her parents are paying for her film school as well as the apartment (not to mention the fact that she also borrows $10,000 from her parents).  Apparently, the fact that Julie has lost her young good-for-nothing junkie boyfriend is sufficient reason to care about her.    

Following the screening, there was an interview with director/screenwriter Joanna Hogg.  Hogg said that she wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to attend the screening because, travelling from England, she was having issues securing a visa; it was only two days earlier that she knew she’d be able to fly to New York City.  The movie’s star, Honor Swinton Byrne, was supposed to accompany her, but because her own visa approval hadn’t been finalized yet, she was still in England.  The director said that she had originally wanted to shoot both parts all at once but was unable to do so because she could only secure the funding for one film at a time; it took a year to get funding approval for part two, so this delayed the production.