User Reviews

It’s rare for sequels to surpass their predecessors, especially when the original is as brilliant as The Souvenir. Yet, Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II does just that. The sequel dives deeper into Julie’s emotional and creative journey, offering richer storytelling and more compelling performances, particularly from Honor Swinton Byrne. With assured direction and stunning cinematography that will leave you visually captivated, this film redefines and enhances the original, making it a remarkable cinematic achievement.

The Emperor; naked and unwashed. It’s perfectly obvious that the characters in this film are presented as avant-garde and self obsessed bores. I found it embarrassing to behold because you’re forced to accept the characters’ self destructive behaviour as acceptable. In this unreal world most people smoke heavily and hold their cigarettes as a flag of supposed sophistication with nobody aware they’re headed for a future drowning in their own phlegm. The Loachesque free flow of overlapping conversations comes across as just copying Loach and is just annoying and uninteresting. I cannot believe this ever got made! In this ghastly world, pale and ghastly people wander about like a population made up of escapees from a psych ward. Nothing normal happens here, despite the thin veil of an attempt at normality by letting the cast free to improvise, the viewer has to observe stupid people pretending they’re tortured geniuses. The only torture actually happening is the poor audience on the rack. Unbelievably, and presumably too weak to counter the first critic who sees this as an opportunity to say the emperor is robed in light, all junior critics join in the nonsense. Even after his arrest for public indecency these people are in denial and are queuing up to visit the deluded monarch in the local loony bin. Not buying it.

'The Souvenir: Part II" goes full meta and emerges as a cathartic experience: filmmaking as a way of healing. Joanna Hogg delivers a fascinating screenplay that is translated to the screen most creatively. This multilayered masterpiece reaches its climax with a dream (?) sequence that blurs the line between fiction and reality, concluding with a brilliant shot. And then there's Honor Swinton-Byrne, who embodies in every way what her mother represents for acting. There's no doubt that she inherited Tilda Swinton's gift. Both parts of 'The Souvenir' define an exercise of assimilating pain and transforming it into art. Oh, and the soundtrack is amazing.

A melancholy and beautifully acted film with a superb cast. I loved Part 1 and loved this one equally. An engrossing and totally believable experience.

Picking up shortly after the events of Part 1, this film sees Julie (Honor Swinton-Byrne dealing with the aftermath of losing her boyfriend Anthony to a tragic event and her graduating film school project she turns to for solace. Truth be told, I wasn't the biggest fan of the first film despite it being rather well made and acted, so I went into this with relatively modest expectations, but I must confess how pleasantly surprised I was by the second part. It not only tops the first one slightly, but put together, both films create something that feels so whole and complete and beautiful, which I wasn't expecting with this at all. It all feels so deeply layered, personal, and resonated with me in quite a few unexpected ways. The performances from Swinton-Byrne and her mother Tilda Swinton are especially masterful. By the time the credits rolled, I found myself quite mesmerized by this story that only now feels so complete after having seen both parts. There are some confusing editing moments towards the end, but overall, not only did this second part make me reconsider and rethink part one entirely, but put together, this is one of the most intimate and personal films I've seen in a long time. I just can't stress enough how I never would have guessed the second part would make me appreciate part one so much more, because both parts together make for such an incredible story and commentary on film, art, life, etc.

In 2019, The Souvenir received near-uniform acclaim from the so-called especializad critic, and when I actually watched the film, I was quite surprised at how sterile it actually was. It's nothing new of course, the critics and I don't usually see eye to eye, but that the same thing happened to me with both films, makes me wonder if it was really me who missed something. I'm not sure what prompted the director to believe this story deserved a sequel. Nothing in the first part's story hinted that anything more was needed. But here we are, and bottom line what I couldn't get out of my mind is that The Souvenir Part II is basically the idealization of post-tragedy events. Writer/director Joanna Hogg picks up this story based on her real life right where the first film ended. But this one focuses, as expected, on how her main character processes her emotions over the loss she suffered in the first film, but this is where the fundamental flaw of the film is revealed and this has to do with her character and her own internal conflicts, both personal and professional with her working on her thesis as a film student, the whole in-depth monologue may have more than clear meaning to its creator, but what about the viewers? Joanna Hogg exposes an interesting story that unfortunately neither she, nor her protagonist manage to externalize in a way that means more than what it means to her. It's still a good film, and I actually liked it better than the first part, but I also think that a lot of the praise received is undeserved.

We walked out after the first hour. The film makers didn’t create this with an audience in mind. They should have spared us the distribution and kept it for their own private parties. Self indulgent pablum.

BORING yet another stupid naval gazing self congratulatory crap film that the critics love for some reason. Don’t waste your time or money.

Seamless in its exploration of film and how fact meets fiction or fantasy meets reality when practicing the art of cinematic direction.

Another TRASH A24 "movie" where literally nothing happens for the first 2 hours and fake critics pretend to like it because they're paid off.