Joanna Hogg’s point of departure as a filmmaker, as is the case with her predecessors in Yasujiro Ozu and Chantal Akerman, is the idea that there is nothing stranger, more mesmerizing, more surreal than the lens of realism in its most granular and precise expression. The Souvenir Part II places Julie in the aftermath of Anthony’s (Tom Burke) death in The Souvenir (2019), together completing a two-part narrative that closely tracks Hogg’s own coming of age as a film student in eighties London. With Hogg’s subtle treatment the development of film student Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) between the two films can appear almost imperceptible from scene to scene, yet is tectonic in its entirety. The Souvenir’s Julie wants to make a movie about a young boy’s working class life in de-industrialized and impoverished Sutherland, a port city in the northeast of England. For Julie, her distance from the project in geography and class is what gives it authenticity—she gets to remain safely outside of the world she represents. Not so in The Souvenir Part II: in place of Julie’s preoccupation with authenticity is a brazenly personal moviemaking vision, a messy and honest complicity between filmmaker and subject that reflects Hogg’s own relationship to the two-part project.
The Souvenir Part II continues to interweave elements of Hogg’s personal life, but there is also a capacious quality to Hogg’s unorthodox style of directing that eschews traditional scripts in favor of spontaneity and collaboration. Honor Swinton Byrne spoke with us virtually from Edinburgh to talk about The Souvenir Part II following its premiere stateside. Swinton Byrne described how she and Hogg explored and experimented within the shooting process, how she dovetailed her own emotional life with Julie’s character, and the lovely irony of her mother, Tilda Swinton, cast as Julie’s mother Rosalind.
NOTEBOOK: Can you walk me through the timeline for shooting The Souvenir and The Souvenir Part II, how much time elapsed between shooting for each?
HONOR SWINTON BYRNE: I was 18 or 19 on [The Souvenir], I think I had my birthday during the time we shot in 2017, and we shot that for about three months and then it was two years between films. In that time I was in Africa as a teacher. So then I came back in 2019, and I was 21 when we did the second film. It’s so funny because the [Souvenir Part II] begins two days after the first one ends. It’s a compliment for people to say they couldn’t tell. It’s interesting because I feel like I grew up a lot in those two years, so it’s quite appropriate for the film that when Julie comes back she’s quite a different person.
NOTEBOOK: Did you come to The Souvenir II with a different perspective on Julie and Anthony’s relationship than you had filming the first film?
SWINTON BYRNE: I was very changed when I came back—I had goals, I was feisty, I didn’t put up with any shit. So I had a little less patience for that relationship when I came back. It’s been a beautiful process for me because I was like Julie when I was younger, thankfully not something quite as traumatic as the death of a partner, but I went through some things, and I like to think I grew stronger, so I have a little Julie inside. You know what, I understand why she apologizes when she does. I get it, but I don’t agree with it now. When I came back I definitely had a little less patience… it was nicer because I could also be more vulnerable with the character.
NOTEBOOK: I wanted to ask about director Joanna Hogg’s unconventional way of working, in which you don’t necessarily follow a script or know how the story ends. Could you talk a little about what the process was like for you from scene to scene? Was there a particular line or set of lines that a scene was supposed to get to, and how you get there is up to you?
SWINTON BYRNE: There was no script; the whole thing was improvised. Joanna really doesn’t like to say improvised because there is a design to it, but I say improvised because that’s how it felt to me—the whole thing was so spontaneous. Of course we were following quite a structured storyline, a sort of path. There was always an endpoint to each scene, and however I got to that, it doesn’t matter that’s up to me. She would explain almost nothing the first take, and then throughout the scene I’d discover things, like Max saying he’s gay or that I’ve been robbed, and so I’d gather more information not from her but from the scene. And then Joanna sits down and says right, this was great, but we’re going to do it another way. Maybe you say that again but softer or more confidently. She really liked it; I really loved it as well, because it gave me such freedom, the first take, because it’s a complete free-for-all, trial and error.
NOTEBOOK: Julie is surrounded by many strong, outspoken personalities: Her classmates, professors, and father. Julie overhears her own lead actress say that she is too naïve, fragile, lazy even. You portray Julie’s passivity in quite an active, compelling way. How were you embodying those emotions in these moments?
SWINTON BYRNE: That’s such a good question, no one’s ever asked me that before. I think tapping into that vulnerability I did have, being a bit closed off—I wish I could explain a method to it. It was so funny, it was the way I was thinking and my body followed from that, I wish I could explain how. She just possessed me.
NOTEBOOK: My favorite part was when Julie makes a pass at her editor, who she realizes is gay, and Julie’s body language, the horror of having just put yourself out there.
SWINTON BYRNE: You know what the funny thing is, I had no idea that Max was going to say he was gay, so the take that they used is the one where I was like, oh no! Oh no. The thing that is really beautiful, something Joanna spoke to me about, was in the 80s, the sort of deeper meaning of him saying that he’s going to go take care of his boyfriend who is ill. Maybe linked to the boyfriend possibly contracting HIV. It’s beautiful in how it’s unexplained, unresolved.
NOTEBOOK: I wanted to ask about Julie’s graduation film, which is a memorial to Anthony. Instead of the actor Julie has chosen to play her lead, we see Julie play herself. It feels like a dream sequence, remembering the details of a person that were insignificant inside the relationship, but outside of it, takes on a world of meaning. Could you walk me through what Julie is exploring here?
SWINTON BYRNE: I didn’t realize this but it’s based on Joanna’s real graduation film, Caprice [1986].It’s a must-watch, it’s with my mom when she was 25, so she’s a little older than I was in The Souvenir Part II, and she’s so beautiful in it. The way Joanna described it to me, it follows the seven stages of grief—not quite seven, but it’s close enough. That was definitely a bit more structured than the rest of the film. There was a strict design to it.
NOTEBOOK: I wanted to ask you about Julie’s relationship with her mother. It struck me as quite an easy, comfortable relationship, but there’s also a real boundary. It’s as if there is a line the two will never cross.
SWINTON BYRNE: It’s so funny, it’s a relationship I really don’t have with my mom. I’m best pals with my mom, we’re like conjoined twins in real life—it was more funny than weird, playing this total game of how far we can get away from how we actually are with each other.
NOTEBOOK: That was the most acting you had to do.
SWINTON BYRNE: That was the most acted bit, yeah, which was quite weird. But it was so much fun to do that with my mom. But it’s interesting because Julie’s relationship with her mother, Rosalind, is one I don’t fully understand, that old fashioned sort of mother-daughter. The mother is from a completely different age and lived through the war. It’s interesting because Rosalind is very much like my grandmother. My granny was Australian-Scottish, so not quite traditional English, but she had this slight sort of, very gentle housewife with a slight separation, like she’s not really going to tell her children that she loves them. That genre of women at that age in the 80s, those slightly older mothers, it’s very interesting the relationships they have with their daughters.
NOTEBOOK: I was watching your interview at the New York Film Festival in 2019, and Hogg made an interesting remark about your being different from other women your age in her mind. What do you think she meant?
SWINTON BYRNE: I wish I knew. She’s the one to ask about that—I think that’s a compliment? Possibly because I made a comment about how I feel very comfortable in the 80s, very comfortable with a practical, un-Instagram, un-appearance based way of life. I don’t feel like I really belong in 2021, it’s not really my genre.
NOTEBOOK: I’ve seen viewers and writers echo a question about The Souvenir, and I’m curious if you’ve gotten it directly or heard it through Hogg. The question is: Why does Julie stay with Anthony? The second she realized he’s a heroin addict, or that he burglarized her flat, she should’ve left him.
SWINTON BYRNE: I can’t explain it, I wish I could. I’ve been in that position, not quite the same, but I really do look back and think, what was I thinking at the time? There is no explanation, I’m afraid. I think Julie wants to make the best of the situation, has some pride, doesn’t want to admit this man isn’t right for her, what her friends are saying, what her parents believe, she wants to see it through, she wants to help him, I think. But we’ll never know.