(Ratings: 4.5/5 Star – 577 Votes)

Cast and Crew:

2019 The Souvenir Full Movie Cast:
Honor Swinton Byrne Tom Burke Tilda Swinton
Watch The Souvenir Free Online Story by:
Joanna Hogg

Movie The Souvenir Introduction:

This year’s well regarded critical darling is a bit of a non starter for me. Although well acted (w/the lead played by Tilda Swinton’s daughter Honor Swinton Byrne) this tale of a film student dealing w/her spiraling drug addict boyfriend (played by Tom Burke who is excellent in Cinemax’s Strike series) is competent but de rigueur as these stories tend to be.

Never actually seeing any of the work this aspiring artist is making is a big detriment to the proceedings since all we have are some sporadic classroom or advisor scenes sprinkled throughout the film w/the bulk made up of scenes which feel like a glorified after school special. Tilda Swinton shows up playing her own daughter’s mother (I know a stretch!) & Richard Ayoade (a good filmmaker in his own regard see his movie Submarine) as one of Bryne’s school chums.

Details:

If you ever wondered why some become enmeshed in another very flawed persons life……….and cannot break the enchantment, this is a film for you to watch. And savor. It takes a while to get there (the first act or so is quite tedious in ways as the male leading actor is a bit mush mouthed,) but it does pay off. The two leading actors (females) are exquisite. We saw this on our last day in London (we live there one month a year) and it was a perfect way to spend the evening. Be ready to embrace the British dialect………

Watch The Souvenir Online Overview:

I have never seen a Joanna Hogg film before but really liked this. A young privileged woman enters into a dark relationship with an older man. It ends up breaking her heart but gives her the experience she needs to develop her career as a film maker. It appears to be semi autobiographical. Lovely performances from Tom Burke, Tilda Swinton and Tilda’s daughter. Hogg knows how to frame a shot.

A fractured and fragmented plot echoes the way she places her camera which peeps behind corners and captures her actors from behind or from oblique angles. Great use of 1980s pop music and operatic arias to underscore her characters.

Public Remarks:

Of the thousands of films that I have watched in my lifetime, The Souvenir ranks at the bottom of the list. It lacks drama, interesting characters, and development. It’s as if there were no screenplay or master plan, giving the impression that the production was poorly improvised whenever the culprits involved could get off from their day jobs. It also doesn’t help that the male character, supposedly a worldly 40-year-old heroin addict, looks like a sullen baby-faced teenager.

The young impressionable female lead is so indecisive and gullible that we rapidly lose sympathy for her. What this film needed was another director, screenwriter, actors and film editor. Possibly a Louis Malle, Douglas Sirk or John Cassavetes could have wrested something memorable out of the slight material. I have read with a shudder that there is to be a sequel. Having survived the original, I will not be seeing or reviewing it.

Reviewing Full The Souvenir Movie

The Souvenir 2019 Film

Movie Conclusion:

A truly dreadful cinema experience. Dumb rich girl falls for a louche aesthete whose primary occupation is heroin addict. He sponges off her, steals her stuff to buy drugs, pontificates endlessly. Ultimately, he kicks the drug habit, then, not a minute too soon, relapses and dies shooting up in a toilet, off camera thank god. Interspersed with this inanity are scenes of film students drinking and having arty talk and making arty film.

However, In one scene, dumb girl comes home to find a tattooed guy in her apartment. She orders him out and he leaves. What was that about? We never know, and frankly, we don’t care. in-between. This film needs a good editor, but if it had one, there would be little left of it. I suspect there is an autobiographical element to this mess, which might explain the gravity the writer/director thinks this story merits. Watch The Souvenir movie, A lot of good actoring wasted.