‘The Souvenir Part II’ Review
R: Some strong sexuality and language
Runtime: 1 Hr and 46 Minutes
Production Companies: BBC Film, British Film Institute, Sikelia Productions, Protagonist Pictures, Element Pictures, JWH Films
Distributor: A24
Director: Joanna Hogg
Writer: Joanna Hogg
Cast: Honor Swinton Byrne, Jaygann Ayeh, Richard Ayoade, Ariane Labed, James Spencer Ashworth, Harris Dickinson, Charlie Heaton, Joe Alwyn, Tilda Swinton
Release Date: October 29, 2021
In Theaters Only
In the aftermath of her tumultuous relationship with a charismatic and manipulative older man, Julie begins to untangle her fraught love for him in making her graduation film, sorting fact from his elaborately constructed fiction. Joanna Hogg’s shimmering story of first love and a young woman’s formative years, The Souvenir Part II is a portrait of the artist that transcends the halting particulars of everyday life — a singular, alchemic mix of memoir and fantasy.
To be completely honest with y’all, I was not a fan of The Souvenir Part I. During Sundance 2019, I went to the P&I screening already exhausted from watching three films that day. However, it didn’t help that the film was so boring that, during the first hour, I dozed off, took a nap, woke up, walked out, and went back to my Airbnb to continue that sleep. When the film was officially released, I gave it a second shot and watched it all the way through. I still disliked it. While Honor Swinton Byrne and Tom Burke were great in their respective roles, I thought the romance was so unengaging and toxic that for a two-hour runtime, it became completely unbearable. Most critics adored it but I was just so far from its wavelength. Now we’re at the concluding chapter of Joanna Hogg’s two-part semi-autobiographical drama, The Souvenir Part II, and to my surprise, I absolutely loved this movie! This is one of my favorite movies of the year that hit way too close to home and is currently within my top ten! Huh?
Given that this is a direct follow-up to a romanticized yet personal moment in the filmmaker’s life, writer/director Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II remains an intimate glimpse at a capsule of her life with a cinéma-vérité style. Now that Anthony (Tom Burke) is out of the picture due to *spoiler alert* his suicide, the film focuses on Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne), who is processing her grief while attending uni as a film student, working freelance gigs, and routinely seeing her loving and wealthy parents (Tilda Swinton and James Spencer Ashworth). Since the emotions for Anthony still linger and she’s looking for some form of release, Julie does the most obvious thing a film student could do for her thesis project: make a semi-autobiographical piece about her toxic relationship with Anthony.
While it sounds like a conventional setup for a coming-of-age flick on paper, Hogg takes a smart and meta approach to this concluding story. It’s self-reflective while not coming across as obnoxiously self-indulgent. It’s not in your face about its self-awareness, taking an authentic aspect of what film students do (make their reality into art) and using that as a basis of Hogg’s reflection. Through Julie’s writing and direction, you see her constant struggle to bridge the pieces between what’s real and what’s fiction about the relationship that’s still fresh in her memory. As her crew often questions her choices in direction and writing, they, and other characters, air their opinions about the relationship. Hogg truly steps out of herself to offer a rebuttal to Julie and her romanticized perception of somebody that she used to love while the first film felt entirely like a one-sided essay without much argument.
Through this sequel, I found myself attached to Julie, whose navigation of processing this loss from a creative and personal standpoint pierces one through the heart. Honor Swinton Byrne is sublime in her performance, honing in her character’s feelings and being unafraid to let those emotions go when necessary. Due to Byrne being her character’s age, the way she explores being in her 20s is so damn authentic and down-to-Earth that it made me see much of myself in Julie. I’m primarily relating to her bouts of depression, grief, and lifestyle as a film school student. As this new chapter of Julie’s life begins, you see her deal with anxiety and loneliness that at times hits too close to home. There are ample scenes where her sadness is either tested or moved to the forefront and it hits with the same painful richness as Jo March’s speech of loneliness in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women (2019).
Hogg’s depiction of film school accurately nails being a student and the personalities that collide. The film takes place during the ‘80s without bringing too much attention to the era in a nostalgic sense, but everything regarding Julie in film school resonates with today’s atmosphere. It eerily nails all of the attitudes, from not-so-collaborative people, unsure directors, and mean film professors who don’t get your vision because they couldn’t make a career out of it themselves. As a recent graduate, the film’s damn perfect depiction of being a film student in their 20s made me reminisce about my days as one of them.
Unlike its predecessor, Part II is more lively and balances being intimate and sentimental with being more confident in its comedic sensibilities. Richard Ayoade is this movie’s MVP as Julie’s esteemed filmmaker friend Patrick, whose short temper and charismatic flamboyant leave you in stitches every time he appears on the screen. He’s utilized as the main point of reference for Julie, who goes to him for advice, and God he’s so witty and hilarious. The dynamic between Honor Swinton Byrne and her real-life mom Tilda Swinton is a force of both comedy and drama that is so strong and breathes incredible life into the film. Their relationship was, to me, the best functioning element of the predecessor and it’s even better in Part II because all of the hesitance Rosalind had towards Julie is thrown away so she could emotionally tend to her baby.
Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir Part II is a superior sequel that fine-tunes the shortcomings of the predecessor to give it a louder voice in its naturalistic style. Hogg is courageously self-critical and reflective about her art and a personal moment in her life that sweeps you up, even if you weren’t fond of the first film. Part II plays a myriad of bold narrative tricks in storytelling and style while retaining the tone of its predecessor, but it’s noticeably more confident in stepping out of its own shoes. Though I wasn’t a Souvenir fan, Souvenir II hit close to home in unimaginable ways. It's a masterpiece of an emotional release that not many filmmakers get to do in this fashion.
