#370 - Joanna Hogg on the Meta Self-Reflexiveness of The Souvenir Part II

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special  Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with filmmaker Joanna Hogg and NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim. Grieving and depleted from the tragic end of a relationship with a boyfriend who had suffered from drug addiction, young Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) summons the emotional and creative fortitude to forge ahead as a film student in 1980s London. Continuing the remarkable autobiographical saga she had begun in 2019’s The Souvenir, British director Joanna Hogg (a filmmaker of unceasing visual ingenuity and sociological specificity) fashions a gently meta-cinematic mirror image of part one, cutting to the quick in one surprising, enthralling idea after another. A film about finding one’s artistic inspiration and individuality that avoids every possible cliché, The Souvenir Part II is a bold conclusion to this story of unsentimental education, told with the filmmaker’s inimitable oblique poignancy, and featuring a mesmerizing supporting cast including Tilda Swinton, Harris Dickinson, Ariane Labed, Joe Alwyn, and a scene-stealing Richard Ayoade. The Souvenir Part II is now playing in our theaters, go to filmlinc.org/souvenirII for showtimes and tickets.