The Souvenir

Director: Joanna Hogg

2019 / 120min / DCP

Hogg, who has quietly established herself as one of the finest UK filmmakers working, offers a keenly observed, sometimes bruising portrayal of toxic romance set in ’80s Britain, starring Honor Swinton Byrne (daughter of Tilda, who plays the character’s patrician mother) as Julie, an aspiring filmmaker who begins a relationship with Anthony (Tom Burke), a slightly older man in the employ of the Foreign Office whose attractive intelligence and worldliness can’t compensate for the fact that he is an addict and a natural manipulator. Hogg’s usual compositional rigor works in service of enormously empathic semi-autobiographical storytelling, using flashback inserts in order to plumb the psychology of a hopelessly dysfunctional relationship.

“The train scene in The Souvenir is brief but indelible. It is all indulgence: Julie and Anthony have purchased matching luggage sets, enjoy champagne, and are very much in love. But with any indulgence it carries with it the knowledge that it is all too much, that it can’t last. The relationship will soon crumble, but what a beautiful fantasy it was.” —Series curator Genevieve Yue

Distributor: A24

Part of Trains: Long Distance Passages