☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½
The Souvenir: Part II (2021) – J. Hogg
It isn’t just the
music, or the hair or the fashion, that evokes the 1980s but something else uncanny
that director Joanna Hogg has captured in this sequel to (or continuation of)
her 2019 film: a feel (and I should know because I was there – although not
in London where the film takes place). Honor Swinton Byrne again plays Hogg’s
former self (renamed Julie Harte), who we find back at film school, grieving
for her ex-boyfriend who died at the end of the first film, revealing a dark
and secret life. She’s shattered – living
with her parents (played by the actress’s real life mum Tilda Swinton and James
Spencer Ashworth) but slowly ready to face the world again. In this way the
film feels uplifting, as Julie begins to find her feet again, deciding to focus
her graduation film on her tragic relationship as a way of processing and
moving on from the past. (Indeed, Julie’s decision echoes Hogg’s own decision
to focus on these events of her past in The Souvenir Parts I and II, even though
her own graduation film, starring Tilda Swinton pursued a different topic). But
you can’t escape the moodiness that underscores the film’s arc and the choice
of period music highlights the moods (and change in mood) in Julie’s life – I felt
this film as much as watched it. For
those interested in the art of filmmaking, Hogg also provides a (sometimes scathing)
look at the behind-the-scenes world of film school and, in the final scene,
reminds us that The Souvenir: Part II is artifice rather than reality, created from
memory by someone who has survived and since prospered.
