“The Souvenir”– Movie Review

This week at Film At Lincoln Center, I attended a sneak preview of the new drama, “The Souvenir”, starring Honor Swinton Byrne, Tom Burke and Tilda Swinton. 

Synopsis

When a young film student discovers her boyfriend is a drug addict, how will it impact her career aspirations?

Story

No one ever said that being 24 years of age in England during the 1980’s was going to be easy for anyone – but it was especially difficult for Julie (Swinton Byrne), a young film student anxiously searching for her identity and voice in her artistic endeavors.  As challenging as her classes and projects were, she was also faced with something else that would take up a considerable amount of her time and energy: Anthony (Tom Burke), a stylishly dressed young man of surprising intellect and insight into matters of art and philosophy.  After exchanging many ideas on wide-ranging subject matters, a mutual attraction develops and Anthony winds up moving into Julie’s apartment.

As worldly and sophisticated as Anthony seems to be, it’s a bit unclear how he earns a living.  Julie, for her part, isn’t overly concerned with this because she’s enjoying Anthony’s company so much as they spend a great deal of time together going out to dinner and on exotic European trips But exactly who is paying for all of this?  It appears that this extravagant lifestyle may be, at least in part, subsidized by Julie’s mother Rosalind (Swinton). Regardless, it doesn’t appear to be too much of an issue – at least not yet, anyway. But once Julie learns that Anthony is addicted to heroin, that’s when she starts to take notice of some rather strange behavioral issues that are difficult to overlook. 

Eventually, it all becomes too much and Julie breaks up with him – but even that doesn’t last terribly long.  When they make an attempt to reconcile, things don’t exactly go as well as they both had hoped. By now, Anthony seems even more deeply consumed by his addiction and very possibly beyond help.  One night, when he was expected to show up at Julie’s apartment, he turns out to be a no-show. Has Anthony decided he no longer wishes to be involved with Julie or is there yet another reason for his absence?   

Review

Although “The Souvenir” has an interesting story that’s worth telling, it feels rather disjointed in areas and seems to leave too many loose threads hanging.  According to the filmmaker, this was done intentionally, to leave open areas for the audience to draw their own conclusions. However, it only leads to a confusing experience.  You wind up asking yourself what happened in a particular scene, why it happened or questioning its relevance to the rest of the story. For example, there is a scene where Julie gets sick; much is made of this but then it’s suddenly dropped and never referenced again.

Certainly, there are good performances and “The Souvenir” is lovely to gaze upon – not unlike the 1778 painting from which it takes its title.  But when it becomes something of a challenge to put together the pieces of the puzzle that is this story, it rapidly transmogrifies into a thoroughly exhausting experience.  There is also the matter of why Julie is so strongly drawn to Anthony, especially when he’s dragging her down so much. Aside from sex, they don’t appear to share too much (she doesn’t do drugs); the only conclusion left to be inferred is the fact that he’s terribly supportive of her career goals and she can enjoy deeply intellectual conversations with him. 

Following the screening, there was in interview with the writer/director of “The Souvenir”, Joanna Hogg as well as the film’s star, Honor Swinton Byrne and her co-star (and mother) Tilda Swinton.  As a semi-autobiographical story, Hogg said she started writing notes about it in 1988, approximately three years after the end of the relationship. The story is told in two parts; this evening’s screening was Part 1, which dealt with the relationship itself.  Part 2, for which shooting should begin in about a month, will deal with the aftermath of the relationship. Her style of filmmaking is non-traditional in the sense that Hogg doesn’t actually write a typical screenplay containing dialog; instead, she writes notes about the scenes and describes the scenes to the actors – if she needs a particular word or phrase used, she’ll tell them (otherwise they’re on their own).