The Souvenir: Part II

Director: Joanna Hogg, Joanna Hogg, Joanna Hogg

2022 / 108min / DCP

Picking up with Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne), her wealthy mother (Honor’s real-life mother, Tilda), and her classmates (including a hilarious Richard Ayoade) shortly after the events of 2019’s The Souvenir, Hogg follows her student filmmaker protagonist/alter-ego’s progress as a developing artist, using her work now to sift through the rubble of her anguished relationship with Tom Burke’s Anthony—Ariane Labed and Harris Dickinson play the “Julie” and “Anthony” roles in her film-within-a-film but, disarmingly, it’s Swinton Byrne and Burke who appear in the rushes. A compelling portrayal of art as exorcism, and also evidence that an artist’s most precious property is their past. “An amazingly luminous self-portrait of the filmmaker as a young woman… Carries itself with a marvelous austere artistry and compositional flair. This rich and mysterious film is a real achievement.”—The Guardian