The Souvenir

The Souvenir is Joanna Hogg's fourth feature, after Unrelated, Archipelago and Exhibition, and the first in which she turns directly to her own past: a semi-autobiographical account of her years as a film student in 1980s London. Backed by BBC Films, the BFI and Martin Scorsese's Sikelia Productions, it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2019, where Hogg won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize in the dramatic competition, before A24 released it in America and Curzon in Britain.

Julie, a well-off young woman living in a Knightsbridge flat, is trying to make a film about a boy and his mother in Sunderland when she meets Anthony, an older, fluent, faintly mysterious man who claims to work at the Foreign Office. Honor Swinton Byrne, in her first leading role, plays Julie with a watchful, unforced reticence; Tom Burke makes Anthony both seductive and hard to read; and Tilda Swinton, Swinton Byrne's mother, plays Julie's mother. The title comes from a Fragonard painting Anthony shows her. Hogg's method is elliptical: scenes begin late and end early, David Raedeker's camera keeps its distance, and Helle Le Fevre's editing lets time slip between them.

Critics received it as a major British film, with near-unanimous praise in the reviews and particular admiration for Burke's performance. It earned eight nominations at the British Independent Film Awards and won the London Film Critics' Circle's Attenborough Award for British or Irish film of the year. Hogg continued Julie's story in The Souvenir Part II two years later.