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The Souvenir, a tragic story of passionate, blinding first love from Joanna Hogg

May 22, 2019 Patricia Zohn
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I join the chorus of amateurs of The Souvenir, Joanna Hoggs auto-movie--with Tilda Swinton looking like the Queen and her daughter Honor—an unusually fresh faced ingenue—about the first love relationship of a young woman and her elegant junkie boyfriend. The film, purportedly a thinly disguised memoir of Hogg's relationship with an older, brilliant man who seduces her through Fragonard along with the sex she clearly adores, really takes off when a friend of his asks Julie at dinner, "how does it work?"—meaning, how does an innocent like you get it on with a heroin addict?? Of course until then, besides taking the track marks on his arm for a wound that won't heal, Julie is ignorant of his addictive proclivities, as are we (unless we study the spoiler reviews), and even then it's a shock. The film ends up being a torture to watch as she repeatedly supports his habit and dissolute lifestyle. I wanted to knock her upside the head. But, I also was jealous. To be so blindly in love is something achievable only very early in one's life.

In Film Tags The Souvenir, Tilda Swinton, Joanna Hogs, Movies, FIlm