Movie Review: The Souvenir

The Souvenir **** ½ / *****

Directed by: Joanna Hogg.

Written by: Joanna Hogg.

Starring: Honor Swinton Byrne (Julie), Tom Burke (Anthony), Tilda Swinton (Rosalind), Richard Ayoade (Patrick), Jaygann Ayeh (Marland), Jack McMullen (Jack), Hannah Ashby Ward (Tracy), Frankie Wilson (Frankie), Barbara Peirson (Barbara), James Dodds (James), Ariane Labed (Garance).

 

I had somehow missed Joanna Hogg’s three previous films – Unrelated, Archipelago and Exhibition – over the past decade since she made her debut – a mistake I rectified in the weeks leading up to the release of her most acclaimed film to date – The Souvenir. The Souvenir is the best film Hogg has made yet – and yet watching those other films certainly informed and prepared me for this film, which has many similarities to her other work – and when she departs for them, its noticeable and effective. This is a film about a toxic relationship – one that threatens to destroy the main character, who is based on Hogg herself – looking back at herself for the distance of 30 or more years to see the person she was, and what she went through to become the person she has. And how, even all these years later, this relationship has never left her. She still loves her version of Anthony in a way – despite the damage done.

 

The film stars Honor Swinton Byrne is a remarkable performance as Julie – a young film student, who dreams of making movies “outside her own privileged experience”, which in itself may explain why Hogg didn’t actually make her debut film until over 20 years later – she perhaps needed that time to become comfortable making the types of films she does, which are in many ways about privilege and class, and nothing at all like the film Julie describes wanting to make. She meets Anthony (Tom Burke), a slightly older employee of the Foreign Office, and while “mansplainer” would be a kind word to describe him, she falls for him anyway. He can be charming and funny – and he’s certainly smart. They have fun together. We start noticing warning signs before she does – his constant need to money, his transparent excuses as to why he needs to move in, the secrecy with which he treats his job, the increasing number and duration of his absences, etc. He also very clearly loves her though – and that love is powerful. When a friend of Tom’s explains to her that he cannot see how they fit together – why an intelligent, driven young woman like her is with a habitual heroin user – it clearly comes as a shock to her – but she plays it off.

 

In keeping with Hogg’s preferred style, we never see a lot of major conversations – the blowup, argument, conversation, etc. that must have happened at some point where they discuss his heroin use is never seen – although we get other scenes where it becomes clear that the conversation has happened. We also get some rather cheeky scenes of them arguing in bed about space on the mattress, well before we ever actual see them having sex – there’s basically two sex scenes between them, neither graphic, first where she goes down on him, and later when he reciprocates. Hogg has preferred this approach throughout her career – in both Unrelated and Archipelago, we hear an argument we do not see – staying with the people who can hear it, but are not involved. Hogg plays with this a little this time around – making those familiar with her work think she’s up to the same thing, only then to flash to what we didn’t think we would see. She also makes some interesting choices on what to shoot, and what not to shoot – like a moment late in the film where Julie is with her mother (played by her real life mother and a close friend of Hogg’s – the great Tilda Swinton) – where Julie wants to go leave a note on the door for the absent once again Anthony. Tilda wants to go with her daughter, but she convinces her not to – we hear Julie get in the elevator and go down, but we stay fixated on Tilda as she walks to her bedroom and sits and stares. Like many familial relationships in Hogg’s movies – this mother-daughter one doesn’t talk about the hard stuff – there is no evidence they ever discussed Anthony’s addictions – but she knows them just the same. She wants to protect her daughter – but knows she can no longer do that.

 

Hogg’s films have always been extraordinary in how they look. She prefers long takes – having conversations play out in one take, or looking down hallways, etc. The Souvenir is her best looking film to date – as always, she pays close attention to the architecture. The cinematography has a slight haze to it – the ways memory would. The clothing choices tell you a lot about both Anthony and Julie right away – and aid Swinton Byrne and Burke in giving two of the best performances of the year so far. And at the end, Hogg outdoes herself – with two absolutely remarkable shots, the first on a film set where we see a crew doing the exact same shot of an actress in Julie’s movie that Hogg’s crew is pulling off in that exact moment on Julie – which would have been a perfect way to end the film, only to be followed by an even more perfect final shot – a reverse of the final shot of The Searchers.

 

After watching all of her films over the course of a couple of weeks, I am now certainly a Joanna Hogg fan – and this is the best of the bunch. It’s also a rare indie to already have a sequel in the works – and what’s even more rare is that it deserves one. I wish I could watch Part II of this right now.

The Films of Joanna Hogg: Exhbition (2013)

Exhibition (2013) 

Directed by: Joanna Hogg.

Written by: Joanna Hogg.

Starring: Viv Albertine (D), Liam Gillick (H), Tom Hiddleston (Estate Agent), Harry Kershaw (Estate Agent), Mary Roscoe (Neighbour Guest), Carol McFadden (Dina Breeze), Chris Wilson (Ambulance Paramedic). 

 

After two strong features – Unrelated and Archipelago – which featured many similarities in terms of story and style – Joanna Hogg made Exhibition as her third film in 2013. It is undeniably a more ambitious film than her first two – and a more ambiguous one. Instead of a family on holiday – which defined the first two films – Exhibition is about a pair of artists, who have decided to sell their modernist London home that they have lived happily in for nearly 20 years. He, only known as H (Liam Gillick) is more optimistic about the move than she, D (Viv Albertine) is, and there is a quiet tension between the two of them, who are disconnected with each other. Throughout the course of the movie, we will spend more time with her – she is a performance artist, and in a way she is always working. The house has massive windows, and people can always see in. The title then takes on a few connotations – as in an art exhibition, or when you exhibit your house to buyers, or in how their marriage is on display. The house becomes an extension of D and her artistry.

 

In Exhibition, I think Hogg is trying to push herself farther than she had done previously. The film is meticulously crafted. She often shoots empty hallways in the house, listening in on the couple in other rooms. There is a coldness – a sterility really – to the movie that will remind some of Michael Haneke. This extends to everything the couple does. There is a lot of sex in the film (nothing overly graphic) but it as well seems mechanical and passionless. They are going through the motions here. The attention to detail extends to the sound design of the film as well – which is more intricate than what Hogg had attempted up until this point.

 

And yet, as much as I admire a lot about the craft in which the film was made, I have to say that I found Exhibition to be a cold, dull, emotionless film. Perhaps it is the performances – neither of the leads are professional actors, and they are somewhat robotic. That may be part of Hogg’s point – I believe that it is – but it doesn’t help you to connect with them in any real way, or even find them that all that interesting to spend time with. The film repeats itself a lot – making the same points again and again.

 

There are moments that work – when the couple actually speak to each other and she tells him she doesn’t want his input on her work, and he complains that what is he supposed to do – just be there with her, and she says precisely – she wants a companion more than anything. Yet those scenes are far too few with too much of the same in between. Perhaps it’s because I’m not someone who is really into this kind of twee performance art – I run hot and cold on the films or Miranda July for instance, and find this sort of navel gazing to be off-putting at times. Perhaps it’s because Hogg has gone too far into the refuse to explain her character’s motivations – I think Unrelated didn’t need the main character to explain her thoughts which she did anyway in one scene, that Archipelago found the right balance between explaining and not, and think Exhibition goes too far into the other camp.

 

Still, the film shows what a fine filmmaker Hogg is. It’s just that this time there is so much craft on display, and so little purpose for any of it. I like Hogg as a filmmaker – but Exhibition left me cold.

The Films of Joanna Hogg: Archipelago (2010)

Archipelago (2010) 

Directed by: Joanna Hogg.

Written by: Joanna Hogg.   

Starring: Christopher Baker (Christopher), Kate Fahy (Patricia), Tom Hiddleston (Edward), Lydia Leonard (Cynthia), Amy Lloyd (Rose).

 

In Joanna Hogg’s first film, Unrelated, she focused on a large family vacation of an extended upper middle class English family in Italy, and the various problems that arose when an outsider – a friend of the “olds” came along, and was more drawn to the young people. In her second feature, Archipelago, she is once again focusing an upper-middle class English family on vacation – but this time, it is much more tightly focused – just a mother and her two adult children, a family friend who is a painter, and the cook they hire to spend two weeks with them. Once again, it is a family that on the surface, seems to be okay – they are polite to each other of course, although they don’t talk too much. They are there, at a place they used to go when the children were smaller, because the son – Edward (Tom Hiddleston) is going to Africa for a year. They are waiting for their father who arrive – who like the husband of the main character in Unrelated, we never see, but we do overhear numerous phone calls from the other side, that get increasingly intense. And like in Unrelated, there is a long sequence where two characters’ scream at each other – the tension finally boiling over – but we are not in the room with them when it happens, instead we are with the other characters, who have to awkwardly sit in another room and hear the fight.

 

So, yes, it is clear that the first two films in Hogg’s filmography have many similarities – almost as if she wanted to refine her template with her second film that she used in the first. And yet, while there are a lot of similarities, they are not carbon copies of each other either. The family dynamics here are different – the children are a little older, living their own lives, even if they are still messed up. An element of class has been introduced by introducing Rose (Amy Lloyd) – the cook – who Edward bends over backwards to be nice to – even flirting with her a little – while the sister Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) barely acknowledges her, and the mother, Patricia (Kate Fahy) tries to keep the peace between them.

 

Hogg also has refined her style here – in both films, she favors long takes, particularly during the dialogue scenes around a table when the eat – which simply increases the tension and awkwardness. There is a brilliant sequence when they all go to a restaurant, where first the sit around and debate what table they should sit, and in what configuration – and once that is finally decided, and their food arrives, and Cynthia spends a few minutes complaining about it, then talking the waitress, and finally talking to the chef, as everyone else is fairly quiet. It’s a masterclass in screenwriting and acting – the humor of them discussing where to sit, moves into tension and awkwardness. It is really the centerpiece of the entire movie – laying out precisely who everyone is, and how they relate to each other. It’s the best thing Hogg had done to this point.

 

In Hiddleston, Hogg also found a perfect actor for her films. For those who know him only as Loki, seeing him in Unrelated and then Archipelago really is a revelation. In both he is a product of privilege – someone who trading water a little bit, not knowing what to do. In Unrelated, it makes sense – he’s in his early 20s, and still drifting. In Archipelago, he is older (more than the 3 years that passed between the two films) – and it’s starting to be kind of pathetic. He is averse to conflict – he runs away from it, and spends time by himself. He overanalyzes his every move. He won’t stand up for himself. And now, he’s head to Africa, even though it’s clear he has no real desire to do so. His mother loves him, but doesn’t know what to say. And Cynthia is perhaps the most interesting character here – in large part because we don’t spend as much with her, and she is clearly holding back for much of the movie – never letting all that anger out, until, of course, she does.

 

I think Archipelago is a better film that Unrelated – it’s a more confident film, and the set pieces are even better. And she never really does what the scene in the hotel room in Unrelated – where the main character needlessly spells everything out. Here, you still get it all, you just have to intuit it. It is a film that rewards close attention – and confirmed just how good Hogg was as a writer and director.

The Films of Joanna Hogg: Unrelated (2007)

Unrelated (2007) 

Directed by: Joanna Hogg.

Written by: Joanna Hogg.

Starring: Kathryn Worth (Anna), Harry Kershaw (Archie), Emma Hiddleston (Badge), Henry Lloyd-Hughes (Jack), Tom Hiddleston (Oakley), Mary Roscoe (Verena), Michael Hadley (Charlie), David Rintoul (George), Leonetta Mazzini (Leonetta Mazzini), Giovanna Mennell (Giovanna Mennell), Jonathan Mennell (Jonathan Mennell).

 

Joanna Hogg’s debut film immediately marked her as somewhat different than most British directors. If you watch a lot of British films, you will either see a lot of high class period pieces – about kings and queens and nobility, or else you see a lot of kitchen sink dramas of the working class. Hogg’s film, about upper middle class English people on holiday in Italy really has more in common with French and Italian films, than in her own country. This is a film about the problems of well off white people who feel stifled and trapped in their lives. It focuses on Anna (Kathryn Worth) – a woman in her mid-40s, an outsider to this family vacation. She has been invited to come along on holiday by her oldest friend – Verena (Mary Roscoe) – along with Anna’s husband, who at the last minute didn’t come along – apparently because of “work”. But it quickly becomes clear that Anna and her husband are going through a rough patch – we hear her side of conversations on her cell phone when no one else is around where it’s clear things are falling apart. While on this vacation, Anna ends up gravitating more to the “youngs” – than the “olds” – in particular bonding (and flirting) with Oakley (Tom Hiddleston) – who is somewhere around 20, the son of Verena’s cousin, also on vacation with them. But how far is she willing to go with this flirtation – and how far is Oakley?

 

I couldn’t help but think of another film, from a few years before Unrelated set in Tuscany – and that the Diane Lane vehicle Under the Tuscan Sun, directed by Audrey Wells, where Lane played a divorced woman who moves to Tuscany and finds happiness and love, and a renewed sense of purpose on that beautiful island. Other than the setting, and the main character being a middle aged woman in romantic crises, the two films couldn’t be more different – and yet I couldn’t help but wonder if Hogg’s film is some sort of commentary on that films – and films like it. Although this is Hogg’s directorial debut, she was 46 when she made it – late for a debut feature- but perfect for a film about a woman of roughly the same age as she is. There had been a wave of these films about middle aged women getting their groove back (including, of course, How Stella Got Her Groove Back) – and so when watching Unrelated, I thought of those films, because Hogg’s approach is so much different. This isn’t going to be an inspirational story, a story of a woman who remakes herself into something new, finds new love, new adventures. It’s a sadder story than that.

 

It’s also a more mysterious film than those, because Anna doesn’t really confide in anyone – or the audience – as to just what she is feeling. We know she is lying because of those phone calls – her marriage is not okay – but other than that, it’s really late in the film when her issues are truly revealed (in a scene that is powerfully acted by Worth, who is great throughout, but I also think somehow lessens the film – it’s better to have to infer what is going on with her, rather than have her state it). Hogg often prefers long takes in her film – lots of naturalistic dialogue happening in those shots, with people talking over each other, etc. You have to pay attention to pick up what precisely people are saying to each other – and in many cases, what they are not saying. The film captures the awkwardness of being on vacation sometimes – especially with other people’s families, and their own dynamics eventually bubble up. There is a remarkable sequence in which two pf the characters – a father and son – get into a very loud, extended screaming match – and yet we aren’t in the room with them. Instead, we’re by the pool with everyone else, all hearing every word, and powerless to do anything. What do you do in that situation? What do you say? You probably do what everyone here does – sit awkwardly and listen, and then pretend you didn’t hear it after.

 

Worth is quite remarkable in this film, playing a role that could be considered a cliché – the middle aged person pretending to be young again by hanging out with the young people, which will inevitably have led to awkwardness and hurt feelings. Tom Hiddleston is as good as he’s ever been in the other key role – as Oakley, the young man who flirts with Anna, but it’s impossible to quite get a read on him. Does he do this because he’s bored, and she’s there? Does he lead her on? Or is just nice to be taken somewhat seriously by one of the “olds” – when the rest of them basically look at him like a child – since they’ve known since he was one.

 

Unrelated is a sneaky film – it creeps up on you, building slowly to something that ends up being quite powerful. You watch, and you gradually see the cracks appearing in this happy family vacation, and then it builds to subtle, yet powerful, climax – before, like what really happens at the end of vacations, you just pretend that the whole thing never happened, and go back to normal. It marked Hogg as a special filmmaker from the start.