The Souvenir (2019, Joanna Hogg) (Patreon)

54/100

Movies about addicts (or coping with an addict, or being masochistically in love with an addict, or etc.) all share the same herky-jerk trajectory: concentrated misery dotted with interludes of false hope. There's always a plodding inevitability to them as you wait for the person to hit bottom and—depending upon the force of impact—either finally seek assistance or die. So my heart sank when Anthony's needle tracks first appear, because I now knew that Hogg's alter ego would vacillate between outrage and pity for the rest of the film. Both actors do excellent work, and a few isolated scenes beautifully capture the ways in which Anthony meticulously undermines Julie's self-confidence while superficially appearing to be neutral or even supportive. That dynamic has zilch to do with his heroin use, however, except perhaps insofar as one could argue that he shoots up out of his own insecurity. Tenuous, I'd say. In any case, subtle emotional abuse becomes of secondary importance when your boyfriend is screaming in withdrawal or inviting strange men into your flat for unknown purposes; the familiar teeter-totter of promises repeatedly made and broken takes hold, undermining what's genuinely interesting about this memorialized relationship. Also, while I don't imagine that Hogg is inventing stuff that makes her look impossibly naïve, it's difficult to accept that a woman as sharp as Julie otherwise seems would for even an instant swallow Anthony's preposterous claim that he, a known heroin user, robbed her for the good of England, requiring that particular source of cash for some top-secret purpose that she'd totally understand and approve of if only he were allowed to reveal it. I mean, come on. Nobody's that dense. Still not entirely sold on Hogg as a formalist, either—at one point she shoots Swinton Byrne and Burke speaking almost directly to camera while they converse normally, for no particular reason that I can discern apart from foreshadowing HSB's gaze directly into the lens at the end (a ploy that I maintain has not been effective since The Four Hundred Blows—it invariably seems desperate to me). Though I did quite like the actual final shot, which suggests the art/life nexus more evocatively than do any of the film-school sequences. Hopefully the forthcoming (drug-free?) sequel will push further in that direction, though I can't claim to be terribly curious about what happens next.