An Aspiring Filmmaker Falls for a Mysterious Man

Honor Swinton Byrne and Tom Burke in "The Souvenir"
Photo Credit: Imdb.com

While viewing writer-director Joanna Hogg’s new drama, “The Souvenir,” it doesn’t take you long to realize that this is one of those movies that’s going to make you think hard about where it’s going to take you.  You have the characters interacting, but you’re not sure to what it’s adding up, and you’re trying to decipher what their intentions are towards each other as their relationship remains enigmatic.  There’s a sense of romantic mystery behind this film, leaving you engrossed in a story of love and heartbreak that focuses on Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne, daughter of actress Tilda Swinton), a film student in ‘80s Britain who begins a relationship with Anthony (Tom Burke), a man with a troubled life about which Julie doesn’t know.

Swinton, in a breakout performance, proves to be just like mother, in that she’s able to show an intensity to her acting without being showy.  With a quiet voice and the simple ways in which she carries herself throughout the film, Swinton dives into the deepness of her character to show someone who has ambition in her artistic endeavors, having many ideas in her mind of how she would like to express herself.  Swinton shows her character trying to understand the world around her and her own life, and the dedication to her performance allows us to be in her shoes as we share her journey in attempting to comprehend what she’s experiencing.

From Burke’s first scene, you can tell that there’s something hiding within his debonaire persona.  It’s a performance that raises a lot of questions, drawing you into his character as you try to figure out what’s going on behind his tranquilness.  It’s a performance that doesn’t give away his character’s thoughts right away, but instead begs you to pay close attention to how his character interacts with everyone and everything around him.  With Burke displaying the attitude of a well-adjusted, high-society individual, he does excellent work in throwing you off of the scent of the kind of person that his character is hiding.

Tilda Swinton shows up in a few scenes as Julie’s mother, and seeing this real-life mother and daughter portray a mother and daughter on screen brings extra depth to the bond between their characters; and, although Swinton doesn’t have a lot of screen time, it leaves an impact that’s as strong as what has been felt in her other performances.

In Hogg’s screenplay, which is based on her own experiences, she constructs a relationship between two people with different backgrounds that makes it seem as though they like each other, but also makes it seem as though there’s a distance between them, one that never quite lets up.  There are factors that could hinder their bond, and the narrative utilizes a slow-burn approach to the progression of the relationship that makes us wait to see what may bring their love for each other towards possible disrepair.  While this relationship plays out, there aren’t many obvious details given to us along the way about what’s happening or what will happen between Julie and Anthony, but instead, there are subtleties throughout that encourage you to piece together whatever emerges from the story’s elusiveness. 

For David Raedeker’s camerawork, one of the most noteworthy aspects is how he utilizes several shots of characters walking away from the camera with their backs towards us, something that is seen quite a bit with Julie’s character, which surrounds her with an air of mystique.  We can’t see her face in these shots, so we’re left to wonder what Julie’s thinking, providing her with an ambiguity that’s as strong as the one found in the story itself.

A way in which Hogg heightens the intimacy between Julie and Anthony is how she doesn’t use much sound in several of the scenes between them, allowing us to focus on the images and dialogue as their relationship becomes more and more complicated.  We sense the understated emotions that they express, and it’s this quietness that punctuates these sequences and makes their time together on screen brim with both tenderness and tension.

There’s a scene where Julie meets with a professor, and he recommends that she directs a film with a story that focuses more on her experiences, instead of agreeing with her desire to make a film about experiences through which she has never gone.  This gives the movie a sort-of meta quality because we’re watching a movie that itself is a story about Hogg’s experiences, with Swinton acting as her stand-in.  Through all of this, Hogg provides you with a peek into the incidents that shaped her life, making “The Souvenir” a captivating portrait of pursuing a dream while going through the unexpected hardships that fate could have in store for you.

Grade: A