The Souvenir (2019)
Country: GB/US
Technical: col/1.66:1 120m
Director: Joanna Hogg
Cast: Honor Swinton Byrne, Tom Burke, Tilda Swinton
Synopsis:
A film student's attempt to get her feature project off the ground is hampered by her self-abusive relationship with a drug addict.
Review:
Set in the 1980s, this is presumably by way of a 'memoir' from the director, who will have been the same age as her heroine at the time. Whether on a macro or micro level, it fails to convince, however: the protagonist's initial 'working class' idea for a screenplay set in Sunderland is apparently abandoned in favour of static compositions of a female character spouting poetry, though so much is unclear (a bus ride to film on location goes nowhere, the director preferring use it to air a pseudish discussion of the cinéma du look). Conversely, the minutiae of the central relationship exist in unresolved or inconsequential exchanges, none of which betrays an ounce of passion, the only thing seeming to unite them being their own origins within the moneyed classes. If the intention was, as the tagline implies, to represent the fragmented experience of a love affair remembered, then the results are perplexingly forgettable, the film-making too often resorting to impassive shots of the English landscape or constantly morphing apartment interiors.
Country: GB/US
Technical: col/1.66:1 120m
Director: Joanna Hogg
Cast: Honor Swinton Byrne, Tom Burke, Tilda Swinton
Synopsis:
A film student's attempt to get her feature project off the ground is hampered by her self-abusive relationship with a drug addict.
Review:
Set in the 1980s, this is presumably by way of a 'memoir' from the director, who will have been the same age as her heroine at the time. Whether on a macro or micro level, it fails to convince, however: the protagonist's initial 'working class' idea for a screenplay set in Sunderland is apparently abandoned in favour of static compositions of a female character spouting poetry, though so much is unclear (a bus ride to film on location goes nowhere, the director preferring use it to air a pseudish discussion of the cinéma du look). Conversely, the minutiae of the central relationship exist in unresolved or inconsequential exchanges, none of which betrays an ounce of passion, the only thing seeming to unite them being their own origins within the moneyed classes. If the intention was, as the tagline implies, to represent the fragmented experience of a love affair remembered, then the results are perplexingly forgettable, the film-making too often resorting to impassive shots of the English landscape or constantly morphing apartment interiors.
Country: GB/US
Technical: col/1.66:1 120m
Director: Joanna Hogg
Cast: Honor Swinton Byrne, Tom Burke, Tilda Swinton
Synopsis:
A film student's attempt to get her feature project off the ground is hampered by her self-abusive relationship with a drug addict.
Review:
Set in the 1980s, this is presumably by way of a 'memoir' from the director, who will have been the same age as her heroine at the time. Whether on a macro or micro level, it fails to convince, however: the protagonist's initial 'working class' idea for a screenplay set in Sunderland is apparently abandoned in favour of static compositions of a female character spouting poetry, though so much is unclear (a bus ride to film on location goes nowhere, the director preferring use it to air a pseudish discussion of the cinéma du look). Conversely, the minutiae of the central relationship exist in unresolved or inconsequential exchanges, none of which betrays an ounce of passion, the only thing seeming to unite them being their own origins within the moneyed classes. If the intention was, as the tagline implies, to represent the fragmented experience of a love affair remembered, then the results are perplexingly forgettable, the film-making too often resorting to impassive shots of the English landscape or constantly morphing apartment interiors.