“Write what you know,” students are always told on writing courses, though it’s not advice that should be followed to the letter: fantasy and science fiction would be in a sorry place if everyone complied. Perhaps the past two years of isolation and lockdowns have made everyone more reflective, however, since suddenly any number of established film-makers are returning to their youth for inspiration. Even Steven Spielberg, never previously the most personal of directors, is going autobiographical with his next film, The Fabelmans. Two of this week’s VOD releases, meanwhile, find British film-makers tackling the cine-memoir to very different ends.
Joanna Hogg’s inspired, opalescent The Souvenir Part II (now on all major VOD platforms, but also still streaming on Mubi) sees her continuing the portrait of the artist as a young woman that she began in 2019’s The Souvenir. The first film was predominantly a relationship story, as Hogg’s twentysomething alter ego (guilelessly played in both films by Honor Swinton Byrne) attempted to define herself through the perspective of a doomed, wayward man. The second sees the young film student defining herself as an individual, making a film about that troubled relationship, and discovering her vision in the process. It’s a brilliant work that transcends the specificity of its maker’s experience to say something resonant about the challenges facing any young artist.
