🎞️ 1. The Plot That Barely Is
The Souvenir is the cinematic equivalent of watching a relationship decay in ultra-slow motion while someone lightly reads Virginia Woolf in the background. Joanna Hogg’s semi-autobiographical fever dream centers on Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne), a privileged film student who falls for Anthony (Tom Burke), a man who looks like he sleeps in velvet suits and speaks only in cryptic red flags.
They meet. They talk. They sip espresso and discuss nothing. He gaslights. She sulks. Rinse. Repeat. Occasionally someone mentions “making a film” or “the city of Sunderland,” but don’t worry, nothing actually happens. This isn’t a narrative. It’s an Instagram filter for emotional dysfunction.
😐 2. Julie – Human Wallpaper in a Cashmere Turtleneck
Julie is clearly meant to be sympathetic, but she’s less a protagonist and more a vessel for watching someone drift aimlessly in upper-class self-indulgence. She stares off a lot, murmurs sentences that trail into thin air, and never once makes a decision without apologizing for existing. The film expects us to mourn her loss of innocence, but it’s hard to feel for someone whose greatest daily challenge is whether to finish her screenplay or mope in a linen armchair for another 14 hours.
Her character arc is less arc and more… lowercase parenthesis. If this is a coming-of-age story, the coming never really arrives.
🧛 3. Anthony – Heroin Chic with a Side of Condescension
Tom Burke’s Anthony is like if you put Oscar Wilde and a trash fire in a blender. He has the voice of a tired Oxford don and the teeth of someone who chews on cynicism for breakfast. He’s manipulative, arrogant, dismissive, and somehow constantly tired—yet he still manages to carry himself with the slouchy entitlement of a man who thinks quoting Proust excuses every lie.
When he first says, “I’m not who you think I am,” you think, finally, some honesty. But instead of leaving, Julie falls deeper into his velvet-lined hell spiral. Their dynamic is like watching a mosquito flirt with a bug zapper—for two hours.
💤 4. Pacing That Would Make a Tortoise Yawn
This movie is slow. Not poetic slow. Not “let-it-breathe” slow. No—catatonic. Whole scenes are spent watching Julie shuffle from one muted room to another like she’s rehearsing for a role as a ghost in a Restoration Hardware catalog.
Conversations unfold in real time, but real time is not cinema time. It’s the kind of slow that makes you check your watch, then angrily accuse your watch of gaslighting you. Time should move forward, right?
Even the dramatic scenes arrive like drunk birds flying into a closed window. You hear the thud, but there’s no follow-up.
🎓 5. Dialogue That Mistakes Murmurs for Meaning
Nearly every line of dialogue feels whispered through a cashmere sock. Julie and Anthony exchange words like they’re at a séance. “You don’t know me,” Anthony mutters. “I’d like to,” Julie responds. Silence. Pause. More silence. Cut to a pensive stare at a wall.
It’s like listening to a breakup between two antique dolls in a museum vitrine. The emotional stakes are high, but the delivery is Xanaxed into submission. And everyone acts like mumbling cryptic nonsense is a form of intellectual flirtation. Spoiler: it isn’t.
🏛️ 6. Art Direction: Bougie Sadness, the Movie
Every room looks like it’s been styled for a Vogue spread on existential dread. Pale color palettes. Walls that whisper of generational wealth. Curtains that probably cost more than your car. Hogg knows how to compose a shot, and she’s unafraid to let scenes breathe—until you beg them to stop breathing.
It’s a film soaked in soft lighting, expensive furniture, and the unmistakable scent of expensive boredom. You can practically hear the walls judging you for not going to Cambridge.
🧠 7. Themes: Grief, Identity, and Passive-Aggressive Addiction
Yes, Hogg wants to say something about first love, self-discovery, and how women are often emotionally bulldozed by older, broken men. But the problem is, the themes feel buried beneath layers of self-impressed detachment. There’s no emotional breakthrough, only a distant hum of “I guess that was bad, huh?”
The film’s title suggests a token of memory. But all I took away was a lingering sense of frustration and the suspicion that the entire film was gaslighting me into thinking it was profound.
🛋️ 8. Performances: Good Actors Drowning in Their Own Stillness
Honor Swinton Byrne brings an earnest, unguarded energy to Julie, but she’s hampered by a script that requires her to act like a doily for half the runtime. Tom Burke, meanwhile, is magnetic in that toxic ex-boyfriend way—but even his charisma begins to rust under the weight of endless sighs and over-enunciated detachment.
Tilda Swinton shows up as Julie’s mother (her real-life one, too), which is cool, but mostly she just knits and frowns from afar. Like a beautiful hawk judging everyone silently.
🧾 9. Conclusion: A Love Letter to Ennui
Watching The Souvenir is like being handed a leather-bound journal and told you’re not allowed to write in it—only stare at the binding and pretend you’re feeling something. It’s not a film so much as an impression of one. All atmosphere, no oxygen.
If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to sit in a London flat for 119 minutes while two emotionally unavailable people destroy each other with passive aggression and velvet coats—well, this is your film. If not, run.
⚰️ 10. Final Verdict: Aesthetic Misery Dressed in Designer Sadness
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 black turtlenecks
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Concept: Intriguing in theory—withered in execution
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Characters: Human placeholders
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Dialogue: Whispered wallpaper paste
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Pacing: Stalled meditation retreat
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Emotion: Checked out
TL;DR
The Souvenir is less about the pain of love and more about the pain of patience. It’s a beautiful, slow, moody descent into an emotional sinkhole with no catharsis and no ladder. Watching it feels like dating Anthony yourself—hypnotic at first, but eventually exhausting, alienating, and, worst of all, boring.
