52 Films by Women Vol 6. 17. THE SOUVENIR PART II (Director: Joanna Hogg)
There is a pitifully
small group of people – filmmakers or people who can identify with the
struggles of putting one’s vision onto celluloid – who will enjoy Joanna Hogg’s
arthouse sequel, The Souvenir
Part II. The rest of the world
will find cinematic pleasure elsewhere. I had a great time – and for a film
that is also about grief, that is saying something.
Hogg’s 1980s-set
follow-up is ‘partly’ autobiographical. Her protagonist, Julie Harte (Honor
Swinton Byrne in what maybe her final screen role – her only one, in fact)
shares Hogg’s initials. In the 2019 ‘part one’, Julie’s boyfriend, Anthony (Tom
Burke), a heroin addict who may have been a member of the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (the film is set in the 1970s) had died. Anthony was
unreliable, had borrowed money from Julie and had even broken into her flat to
ensure he had cash for a fix. In the sequel, Julie returns to Raynham Film
School – everyone’s favourite film school, in my humble opinion - to make a
film inspired by her experiences, or, more accurately to directly represent
them.
It is a cliché that
artists take their trauma and try to turn it into a meaningful piece of work in
order to expiate or make sense of what had happened – go backwards to go
forwards, so to speak. You make art about what you care about. In shooting her
movie, Julie steps outside of herself. She represents her relationship to
Anthony through a series of telling moments, because that is what film is –
telling moments. Julie doesn’t try to understand Anthony through the finished
film, but her collaboration gives her some perspective on him. Her lead actor,
Pete (Harris Dickinson) provides some insight about Anthony’s pain him as he
struggles to understand his character, wearing a long, multi-buttoned coat.
Every conversation about the film is really about Julie’s past; how she didn’t
understand what was happening around her and – to an extent – how she is judged
by her ignorance.
Returning to the
role of Julie, Swinton Byrne gives a confident, convincing performance as a
film director in the making. Julie is far more assertive, even when taken to
task about her film’s shortcomings. Three male lecturers call her in. ‘Pink [binding]
ribbon aside, your script is not professionally presented. There are no
headings. This school turns out professionals. Frankly, if you continue in this
manner, the film school cannot back you.’ Julie has a plan B: to borrow £10,000
from mummy (Tilda Swinton, Swinton Byrne’s real-life mother). Julie also
borrowed money in the first film, fuelling Anthony’s habit. This time, she
resolves to pay her mother back.
Shooting goes less
than smoothly. ‘I think we should change the angle,’ Julie announces after a
set is built. ‘The camera shouldn’t see more than the character sees.’ Julie’s
(mostly male) crew is understandably upset. Then she decides to turn a day
scene into a night scene, causing a lighting change and Pete to take off his
coat. ‘The budget is the budget,’ Marland (Jaygann Ayeh), Julie’s production
manager explains. Marland may be based on writer-producer Trix Worrell who was
at the National Film and Television School around the same time as Hogg and
gets a ‘thank you’ in the credits. There is a heated conversation in the car
about Julie’s working methods in which Julie remains silent. Pete puts a
consoling hand or her arm.
Julie does try to
move forward emotionally. She visits an American psychiatrist (Gail Ferguson)
and has a drink with her editor (Joe Alwyn), whom she looks at admiringly.
Julie invites him back to her place and gets an emphatic rebuff – the editor is
returning home to cook dinner for his boyfriend, who is ill. This may be a
reference to AIDS. It certainly takes the film briefly away from its narrow
emotional focus and evokes the 1980s as much as the smoking indoors (on set and
in a cinema), Julie watching the fall of the Berlin Wall and crying and a brief
reference to the short-lived Poll Tax, resistance to which helped seal the end
of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. (I have no doubt though that Julie’s
parents voted Conservative.)
There is a point at
which Julie is vomiting in her parent’s bathroom and you think, ‘what lovely wallpaper’.
It is, indeed, very flowery. This is followed by a later vomiting scene in
Julie’s own flat, where the décor is nowhere near as nice. Julie’s own artistic
endeavours are contrasted with her mother’s. Her father (James Spencer
Ashworth) is keen to show Julie her mother’s first ‘artifact’, an attempt at an
Etruscan pot (now a sugar holder). When her parents’ three dogs are about, her
mother asks her to put the pot out of the way. It falls from the mantelpiece
and smashes. ‘That’s one term’s tuition’, her father says plaintively. Mother
bends to clear up the mess – the ‘sharp bits’ – waving Julie away and
suppressing her emotion. Earlier in the scene, Julie spoke about having to
justify her work to her tutors. ‘They give no direction.’ ‘Typical art school.
They should try farming,’ father says. ‘I’m the director,’ responds Julie. Julie
refuses to describe her film to her parents. ‘I had to explain it a thousand
times at school,’ she adds. Then the pot is smashed. The scene demonstrates
that in creating art, the sensitivities of others are ignored. You simply don’t
have any headspace for them. This isn’t Julie’s intention – and she certainly
wants to make amends. Her mother pulls her hand away, nursing her cut. Harm is
a by-product. In another scene, Julie has to explain to an actress that she
doesn’t have a part in her film, having cast another student, a film director
(Ariane Labed) to portray her surrogate self instead. ‘Don’t say it isn’t
personal. Of course, it’s personal,’ the friend seethes, wine glass in hand.
Film directors everywhere will recognise the pain of this conversation. One
choice made is another choice excluded.
Julie’s own
endeavours are contrasted with those of another student, Patrick (Richard
Ayoade, playing him as the life of the party).
Patrick shows a scene to Julie. ‘I wish I had made it,’ Julie says admiringly.
‘That’s a cliché answer,’ replies Patrick, who has two cigarettes on the go,
one in each hand. He demands to know, ‘how did it make you feel?’ Patrick’s
select audience is polite and non-committal. ‘I want to take the feeling from
this scene and move it to the next to create an emotional flow. So how does it
make you feel?’ He doesn’t get the answers that he is looking for so storms
off. ‘I love it,’ says Julie to another student. That isn’t what Patrick wants
to hear.
Hogg often uses cutaways to compliment the action. Flowers
budding. Julie’s mother in her garden. Pigeons in the rafters. Old newsreel
footage of Sunderland (referenced in Part One). At one point, Julie runs
through the field – one might say Theresa May-style – flowers up to her thighs.
The cutaways suggest Julie’s quiet, contemplative centre. No fireworks. They
also place her in a version of England, the so-called ‘green and pleasant land’
of William Blake’s verse.
The film climaxes at a student screening. I immediately
wanted to know which old cinema they used for the setting. (Having grown up in
the 1970s and 1980s, it is certainly evocative.) Julie is invited to the stage
where she is given the microphone by her tutor. ‘I would like us to raise an
imaginary glass of champagne to absent friends,’ she tells them.
We have seen the rushes of Julie’s film. But what we see on
screen isn’t the film that Julie Harte made, rather the one in her head, in
which she and Anthony play the leading roles. Some critics have described it as
reminiscent of the dream sequences of David Lynch. Others of Michael Powell and
Emeric Pressburger, in particular, The Red Shoes. Ultimately, no
filmmaker ever really makes the film in their head. The finale isn’t so much a
triumphant screening as an articulation of Julie’s or Hogg’s real vision. Such
visions don’t receive validation (awards or great reviews) but exist as the
final measure against the work. Julia trusts her own feeling, even if it
includes a gondola and the theme from Jean de Florette (used
twice).
As for Patrick, Julie comes across him in Soho.
(Misleadingly, there is a shot of the Empire Leicester Square showing John
Badham’s film, Dracula, a product of the 1970s not the 1980s.) Patrick
had dropped out of RFTS. ‘They shut me out. They wanted to make their film. I
wanted to make mine. So I walked.’ ‘Do you think Anthony worked for the Foreign
Office?’ Julie asks him. ‘He was a junkie,’ says Patrick. There is a pause.
‘Which way are you going?’ ‘That way,’ replies Julie, walking in the opposite
direction to Patrick. ‘Excellent choice,’ he cries, Ayoade improvising his
ecstasy as Patrick heads down a dark, seedy alley.
The film ends with a party that bookends the one near start
of The Souvenir Part One. Julie is asked if she has a man in her
life? ‘No,’ she replies. As the party continues, we see it taking place in a
sound stage. The camera moves from right to left as we see a film crew outside.
The last word we hear is Hogg calling ‘cut’.
Reviewed at Leeds International Film Festival, Vue ‘The
Light’, Screen Twelve, Sunday 14 November 2021, 20:15 screening
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