The director confirms her status as a modern visionary with a deft, distinctive and deeply personal story of young love
Joanna Hogg’s new movie is her most intensely personal yet – but this mysterious and beautiful film is not revelatory in any obvious way. It is the second time I have seen it since writing about the premiere at Sundance in January, and the things about it that perplexed and baffled and bemused and entranced me have done so more fiercely. Yet its difficulties now feel not like flaws but rather sunspots of inspiration. The mother-daughter relationship is quietly superb and the musical interludes are wonderful: there is a glorious outing for Robert Wyatt’s haunting Shipbuilding and Willie Mabon’s Poison Ivy.
The Souvenir has already received plaudits as a breakthrough for this director – although I don’t think she needed a “breakthough” given the quality of her three previous films, for those open-minded enough to see them. A rather lovely poster image of its two leads might lead audiences to expect something romantic and comfortingly mainstream. Wrong. The Souvenir is an artefact in the highest auteur register. Its absence of tonal readability is a challenge. But there is also a cerebrally fierce, slow-burn passion in its austere, unemphasised plainness.
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