The Souvenir

2019 • 119 minutes

About this movie

A shy but ambitious film student (Honor Swinton Byrne) begins to find her voice as an artist while navigating a turbulent courtship with a charismatic but untrustworthy man (Tom Burke). She defies her protective mother (Tilda Swinton) and concerned friends as she slips deeper and deeper into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship that comes dangerously close to destroying her dreams. From acclaimed writer-director Joanna Hogg comes an enigmatic and personal portrait of the artist as a young woman, combining passionate emotions and exquisite aesthetics into a lush, dreamlike story of young adulthood and first love. At once enrapturing and mysteriously unsettling—and featuring a profoundly layered breakout performance by Honor Swinton Byrne—The Souvenir is an essential and enduring film from one of our most distinctive and exciting filmmakers.

Ratings and reviews

Very slow, very boring. Film tries to capture that feeling of an intellectual, arthouse, cutting edge film when really the screenwriter needs to broaden their experience and have characters speak genuine dialogue that captures the human experience. Dialogue in this film is forced and superficial. Plot is typical. Film is long, doesn't go anywhere, and boring (no new insights, nothing profound, and no theme to capture of essence of humanity). Skip this movie, don't listen to critics.

This film is a let down but not because it stars and focuses on a talented and inspired woman as some of the misogynist reviews suggest. The writing, acting, characters, and directing are superb. The only reason this film is unwatchable is due to the cinematography, which tries to come off as experimental and avant-garde but in reality is distracting and antagonistic. There are real rules to framing an image, even moving images, to direct the eye toward what is interesting, and when done right or broken in the right ways can serve to execute a great creative vision. This film manages most of the time to instead redirect your attention to a wall or a couch or the floor, so unless you are actually making an effort to pay attention it's really easy to zone out and miss the more interesting parts of the film. Because film is largely a visual medium this work is essentially a failure for the simple fact that it takes concerted effort to enjoy, because of the DP's work (and director's choices) and not in spite of it, and also in spite of the strong performances and writing.

Kinda starts off boring and the kinda dark and gloomy cinematography doesn't help, but once you start realizing just how hopeful yet dark this movie is you totally forgive the earlier complaints.