'The Souvenir (2019)' plays out like a series of memories, a highlight reel of a distinct period in its protagonist's life. This is perhaps fitting considering that it's based on director Hogg's own past, playing out almost as a kind of catharsis for the emotional turmoil she underwent while in film school. It's nontraditional but considered. There's very little exposition, aside from when there's an overt amount of it, and we're often dropped into the middle a scene without any real context, left to piece together the plot through snippets of dialogue. It almost feels as though the thing is taking place to someone we know but aren't close to; we only understand what we see and we only see what we understand. The movie is relatively distant in this regard - although, the viewing experience is always active. It struggles to provoke a deep connection because we aren't really allowed to get close to anyone. Still, the affair is usually engaging. It isn't a masterpiece but it's always well-crafted and often enjoyable. It's a rather complex look at a complex relationship, subtly painting its characters in eventually fairly vivid colours. However, it does start to wear thin after a while, with a slow pacing that sees it drag towards its end. There also isn't a huge sense of escalation, even if the flick ends exactly when it should. It's a definitive narrative so the fact that it's apparently getting a sequel is rather strange. I'd still watch it, though. 6/10

Another film from Joanna Hogg brings another portrait of emotionally repressed, deeply unhappy members of the upper middle classes. To make things worse, the film relies on the over-familliar trope of the struggles of a would-be artist (the most boring of all subjects for an artist to consider),in this case a young woman contemporary to the director and with an apparent aspiration to become a Hogg-like film-maker. In places the film seems to acknowlege the inherent ridiculousness of its protagonist; but she recieves a sympathetic treatment. Hogg's style is frankly bizarre: the opposite of melodramatic, she prefers to show her characters going quielty about their business in the aftermath of unseen trauma. Even the wider structure of the film seems (deliberatley) artless, things happen (mostly offscreen) but there's no attempt to construct a plot in the orthodox sense, to manipulate the sequence of events to create a well-paced story. In general, I hate Hollywood blockbusters with their predictable narrative arcs, and love a good piece of miserablism; but the director has to meet me half-way. In fact, although I was profoundly irritated for the film's first half, I found the remainder more watchable than Hogg's two previous movies. But the basic subject (naive woman whose boyfriend is a heroin addict) was covered with far more wit and perception by Rachel Cusk in her first novel 'Saving Agnes', without the same level of underlying self-regard.

I'm always wary about films with a huge discrepancy between critics and audience reactions, mostly because it typically means a film is either considered pretentious or dumb-fun. That's just the reality of current hollywood. The Souvenir is a movie that you experience more as a spectator from afar rather than something you feel any sort of intimate connection to. It feels like the audio is intentionally hard to dissect, with some scenes either cutting mid conversation or beginning towards the end of one without any sort of context. Which can certainly be a good thing if you're into that sort of filmmaking. I respect anyone's opinion that found Jennifer Kent's direction to be moving and impactful. But I unfortunately found the film to be dull and lacking in personality. For a similar story but better in execution, see 2017's 'Beast'.

4.7/10