The Souvenir

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source: The Souvenir

Quite early on I could tell what was going on in the film. I even had a guess at what the end would be. Despite this, I continued watching expecting more, something big, something shocking and I never really got it. The director does a great job at showing the ins and outs of a toxic relationship, however, it's just not enough.

I usually get in line to see a film that has anything to do with A24 film producers. Also 92/100 meta critic rating! Were they watching the same film! It was so boring and has nothing going for it. The characters are not interesting and the story is pointless. The critics are dead wrong about this one in my opinion. Avoid at all costs! It'll bore you to death, that coming from a guy who loves slow burn films.

Like many, I was bored and confused after viewing "The Souvenir", but I had recently watched and liked Joanna Hogg's "Unrelated" (2007), so I gave her the benefit of the doubt and thought it over. Like some other reviewers, something came to me the next day. I'm not a "feeling" kind of guy, so I have to work to appreciate her method of getting across an emotional complex and the way she will use the whole film to lead to a pinpoint, deep-drill moment of emotional elucidation. In "The Souvenir", I came to think she was portraying Julie as a sort of emotional vampire, vicariously using the troubled life of her lover, Anthony, to fill in the blanks of her previously vapid, upper-middle-class existence--borrowing some misery to give her enough empathy to be able to relate to less fortunate beings in order to fulfill her artistic ambition to be a filmmaker. The hints are there: her frustrated attempt at a working-class documentary; the advice from more than one source, to work from her own experience--the thing she lacks; her insincere credulity at finding needlemarks on Anthony's arm (you were right, nobody is THAT naive), and again when her flat is ransacked; her blind eye to where he goes with the money he borrows from her--an employee of the British foreign office borrowing constantly from a no-income film student. It occurred to me that this was the reason Joanna Hogg gave Honor Swynton Byrne her journals and materials from that time instead of a script in order to keep the actress as naive and unaware of her own motives as Hogg, herself, must have been at that age in this semi-autobiographical study. Then there was the extended discussion of the murder scene in "Psycho". The iconic portrayal of a brutal stabbing without any depiction of the actual physical violence. Julie says little, but has the last word in the discussion, (from memory) "You don't see the actual killing, but you see the end result." Congruently, you don't see Anthony's death, but the end results: the news of his overdose in the bathroom of an art gallery and the lack of remorse on Julie's part, contrasted with the excellent expression of grief by Tilda Swynton, the enormously talented mother of the character, as well as the actress,. And then the solution came to me when I rememberd the "Joanna Hogg moment"--that magnificent shot where Swynton Byrne turns her concentration from directing a film--the attainment of her film student goal--and glares impassively, directly, and most un-naively into Joanna Hogg's camera. Now, we all knew that was meant to be very cinematically significant, but I honestly didn't understand the significance until I solved the rest of the movie--that final, unblinking glare at the audience was Julie saying, "Yeah, I'm an upper class brat, and I got what I wanted. TFB if my junkie boyfriend died." And that realization with the memory of the defiant glare from her pallid, emotionless face made my blood run cold just as my mail carrier plucked the DVD from my mailbox the next day. I won't watch it again, but I recommend that the bored and confused give it some reconsideration.

This film seems to be trying to turn its back on every narrative tradition. It shows us so much, and lingers so long on so many shots and scenes that are utterly unilluminating of any plot or character, and leaves out almost every detail that might help us contextualize what is going on or who these people are. I love Malick, and really appreciate the heuristic style he pioneered. I'm glad when directors don't point at everything and instead let an audience just have an experience. But I, at least, need more than was offered here, where the arcs of all the characters seeming punctuated and unmotivated, and the mise-en-scene mostly arbitrary. I didn't find the cinematography gorgeous at all, it seemed just like whatever was there, often flat and muddy, only occasionally catching a nice bit of light. Maybe a little spoiler here (I guess?) but the last shot reprives a repeating shot, held painfully long, that I guess was intended as chapter markings, reminiscent of the brilliant wide shots that broke up Breaking The Waves, but which seemed completely empty of any meaning, even after that final reprise. Without 2 Swintons, this film would never have gotten a theatrical release.

I wanted to leave early on but stuck it out thinking something would happen soon. The performances were good, but the story was disjointed. What were the reviewers using at Sundance to give it an award?