The Souvenir
Short description
Set in early 1980s Britain, The Souvenir follows Julie, a film student from a comfortable background who is trying to find her own voice as a filmmaker. At a party at her film school she meets Anthony, an older, sophisticated and enigmatic man who works at the Foreign Office. She is drawn into her first serious love affair, a relationship that grows increasingly intense and emotionally fraught as she gives more of herself to it. Julie resists the protectiveness of her mother and drifts from concerned friends, while questions gather around how honest and dependable Anthony really is. What began as a source of inspiration begins to unsettle both her plans and her sense of self.
Joanna Hogg wrote and directed the film, which sits between Exhibition and The Souvenir: Part II in her filmography, and she produced it with Luke Schiller. Honor Swinton Byrne plays Julie, with Tom Burke as Anthony and Tilda Swinton as Julie's mother Rosalind. Richard Ayoade, Ariane Labed and Jaygann Ayeh appear in supporting roles. The film earned 8/10 from 184 critics' reviews, while audiences on TMDB rate it 6.1/10 from 290 votes, and on IMDb it is likewise rated below the critical consensus. Its worldwide box office of about 2 million USD reflects a specialised art-house release rather than a broad commercial one.
What's left behind the scenes
- All the actors read the script, with Honor Swinton-Byrne being the sole exception. Joanna Hogg gave her her own diaries from the early 1980s, notes, photographs, and scripts she had written for films at that time. The actress was instructed to improvise in each scene, while the others had to adhere to the script. Tom Burke played the role of Anthony, and Hogg gave him old letters, records, and notes of the person on whom his character was based.
- All the projects that Honor Swinton-Byrne undertook at film school were based on projects by director Joanna Hogg from her time studying at the same institution.
- Joanna Hogg wrote the screenplay based on her own memories of studying at a London school in the early 1980s. She then distributed the script to all the actors, except for Honor Byrne. Byrne received Hogg's diaries from those years, records, photographs, and old scripts that Hogg had written at the time. As for the role, Byrne was instructed to improvise, while the rest of the cast had to adapt to her improvisations as best they could.
- The film's title is taken from a painting by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) depicting a lady scratching the initials of her beloved into the trunk of a tree.
- The London apartment of Julia, played by Honor Swinton-Byrne, is an exact replica of the apartment where the film's director, Joanna Hogg, lived at the same age. The set was built inside an airplane hangar, and the city visible from the windows is a projection of photographs taken by Hogg in her youth.
- Joanna Hogg herself studied at a film school near London in her youth. Tilda Swinton, who was then completely unknown, starred in her graduation project.
- In the screenplay, Joanna Hogg used memories of her own time in London while studying at film school in the 1980s.
- Director Joanna Hogg had already cast Tom Burke and Tilda Swinton in the film, but couldn't find an actress for the role of Julia. Time before the start of filming was running out. When she met with Tilda Swinton one day to discuss her role, Swinton's daughter, Honor Swinton-Byrne, happened to be present, and Hogg suddenly began to see Julia in her. Hogg and Swinton have been friends since the age of ten, but Hogg had never seen the girl as an actress before, and she had no acting experience.
- Filming took place in Norfolk in August 2017.
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
