80
As heartbreaking as it is acutely observed, Hogg’s deep-diving autobiographical film is a beautiful, confessional tell-all about the brief joys and enduring tragedy that helped her find her voice as an artist.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
100
It may have taken Hogg several decades to realize that her own box of darkness was actually a beautiful gift, but she unwraps it with the care and tenderness of someone who understands its true value.
90
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
This is an illuminating (self-)portrait of a young artist as well as a mesmerizing chronicle of a consuming, destructive relationship that steadily inches its way under the viewer's skin.
100
Screen Daily by Fionnuala Halligan
This portrait of the artist as a young film-maker will certainly stand the test of time.
100
Achingly well-observed in its study of a young artist inspired, derailed and finally strengthened by a toxic relationship, it is at once the coming-of-age story of many women and a specific creative manifesto for one of modern British cinema’s most singular writer-directors.
91
Hogg’s earlier films are striking in their picturesque abstractness as we sit in on conversations from a distance, but the ambition and warmth on display in The Souvenir makes this her greatest achievement.
100
Los Angeles Times by Justin Chang
If The Souvenir seems to move assuredly to its own unconventional rhythms, it’s because Hogg isn’t telling a straightforward story; she’s showing us, piecemeal, how an artist’s sensibility comes into being.
100
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
The Souvenir is an artefact in the highest auteur register. Its absence of tonal readability is a challenge. But there is also a cerebrally fierce, slow-burn passion in its austere, unemphasised plainness.
I found this to be very difficult to watch at times. It's an uncomfortably vulnerable film about a young woman who seems to be the last person to realize what is happening to her. Her upper class naivete and her desire to be taken seriously as an artist is at odds with with her relative newness as both a woman in the world and a budding filmmaker. What is going on with her lover is a mystery to nobody except her, but there's a kind of strength in the conviction of her misguided belief that can be beautiful or terrifying in equal measure. I think its a brave movie about a very sheltered girl shot by a very honest older filmmaker. I had high hopes for these films but I didn't connect emotionally to them. I don't think it's a must watch unless you're interested in a kind of artistic coming of age alongside a portrait of a toxic relationship where the love is, if frustrating, at least very earnestly felt.