The Souvenir Part II — Joanna Hogg expands her own origin story

A prize if you can pin down exactly what is said about the state of British film by the three major properties from the national industry to lately make it to a sequel. (Bond we take as a given.) There is Peruvian émigré Paddington, of course. Also Kingsman, Matthew Vaughn’s doggedly obnoxious spy romp. And joining them now is The Souvenir, finespun self-portrait of a young film-maker in 1980s Knightsbridge enduring loss while finding her artistic voice. The very existence of Joanna Hogg’s densely autobiographical The Souvenir Part II seems like arthouse mockery of multi-chapter blockbusters. A joke too at the expense of those — and among audiences they were many — who felt one Souvenir was more than enough.

Yet maybe it isn’t so different from a Marvel saga. For a start, you’ll need to be au fait with the story so far. In particular, prepare to be lost without knowing that — spoiler warning — the wan, drifting Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) ended the first film undone by the fatal overdose of her shadowy, heroin-addicted boyfriend Anthony (Tom Burke). The aftermath echoes on, the new movie opening with a grief-stricken retreat at her family’s Norfolk country home.

But uplift for all is supplied by Julie’s parents, gently fussing like matching salt and pepper mills. Her mother is again played by Tilda Swinton (for added meta flourish, the actual mother of Swinton Byrne). Enlivened by spaniels, early scenes play as a wry comedy of upper-middle-class English manners. Beyond the high cinephilia, Hogg is gifted at that. The screening I went to brimmed with the knowing chuckles of critics and Bafta voters.

Bereaved, bereft, to be continued. If we’re lucky, life gives us that second act. And so Julie returns to the flat near Harrods and the thinly veiled National Film and Television School. Here, her graduation film goes painfully wrong until it slowly starts to go sort-of right. Exorcising Anthony begins with a strange, silent one-night stand.

Friends pass through and years slip by, signposted by the soundtrack and the odd historical landmark. Out of nowhere, Julie sobs watching the fall of the Berlin Wall, the kind of borderline precious display that brings Hogg’s detractors out in hives. Again she has comic relief up her sleeve, Richard Ayoade’s diva director Patrick — the anti-Julie — back to make a doomed retro musical. (Hogg apparently swears none of this is based on the real Julien Temple and his infamous Absolute Beginners, which is bold of her.)

When the first Souvenir was released in 2019, it seemed of a piece with the much discussed “autofiction” of writers Rachel Cusk and Karl Ove Knausgaard. Here too is the same mix of confessional and hyper-evocative. Hogg summons up time and place uncannily. But she does it how film-makers do — with back projections and plywood sets. The honesty can be raw. (Mummy’s chequebook is often needed even now; Julie hears sneering colleagues call her lazy and naive.) Elsewhere, memories feel more selective. But artifice is part of the deal. If Julie is really Joanna, Hogg makes her a movie heroine too. For all the subtlety, in this second Souvenir she gets a big-screen arc: from pretender to doer, wallflower to centre stage.

Frankly, it makes the sequel more appealing than the original. It also justifies the two-part conceit, less arch prank than a pay-off that lands better for arriving later. Those who loathed the first instalment won’t be back to find out. (Another Marvel parallel: the film is for the fans.) Yet the complete story ends up a valentine to the transformative power of cinema. There are teasing games of self, but cheap-seats pleasures too — emotional closure, droll one-liners, and a great last shot before the final “cut!”.

★★★★☆

In UK cinemas now