Joanna Hogg

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ianthemovie
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Joanna Hogg

#1 Post by ianthemovie » Thu Jun 06, 2019 8:47 am

Joanna Hogg (1960 - )

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"With each film I feel I am getting a bit further into dreamlike domains."

Filmography
Features
Unrelated (2007)
Archipelago (2010)
Exhibition (2013)
The Souvenir (2019)
The Souvenir Part II (2021)
The Eternal Daughter (2022)

Shorts
"Caprice" (1986)

Television
Network 7 — "Flesh and Blood" (1987)
Vicious Circle (1993)
London Bridge — S01E13 (1996)
London Bridge — S01E14 (1996)
London Bridge — S01E15 (1996)
London Bridge — S01E21 (1996)
London Bridge — S01E22 (1996)
London Bridge — S01E24 (1996)
Staying Alive — S02E03 (1997)
Staying Alive — S02E04 (1997)
Casualty — S12E15 — "Love's Labour" (1997)
Casualty — S12E20 — "Degrees of Separation" (1998)
London's Burning — S11E03 (1998)
Reach for the Moon (2000) [mini-series]
Eastenders: Dot's Story (2003)

Web Resources
2014 interview with Meredith Taylor, Filmuforia
2014 interview with Eli Bittencourt, ReverseShot
2016 interview with Mike O'Brien, Take One
2021 video interview with Dennis Lim at the New York Film Festival
2022 interview with Claire Marie Healy, AnOther
2022 interview with Christine Smallwood, Metrograph

Forum Discussion
Unrelated (Joanna Hogg, 2007)

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Mr Sheldrake
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The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019)

#2 Post by Mr Sheldrake » Tue Dec 10, 2019 6:41 am

ianthemovie wrote:
Thu Jun 06, 2019 8:47 am
Has anyone seen The Souvenir yet? I'm feeling a little bit crazy because this seems to be the most highly praised film of the year so far, with everybody at Film Comment raving about it and unanimous acclaim from critics, where I found it to be off-puttingly cold, formal, and humorless. The premise is great (privileged young film student tries to find her artistic voice in early-80s London, while also getting sucked into a toxic relationship with a priggish older man) but I think I may be allergic to director Joanna Hogg's approach, which involves framing her actors in static medium shots while they improvise their way, often fumblingly, through each scene. (She also used this approach in the only other film of hers I've seen, Unrelated, which I found similarly chilly.) Her films feel like an awkward combination of too much control (very little camera movement, with the camera placed at a considerable distance from the actors) and too little control (no shooting script, ad-libbed dialogue). Hogg also seems deliberately averse to involving her viewers emotionally. She will frequently cut off a scene in the middle of a piece of music or at some sort of emotional high point. Her technique ended up killing much of my investment in this story. I'd love to hear how other people responded to this one since it already seems destined to become an art-house darling.
The Souvenir

Hogg employs the snippet approach to narrative, it’s like looking through a friend’s photo album in which the images briefly come to life, conveying more meaning to the friend than the viewer. Its languid and distant tone don’t suit my taste, but the movie has resonated.

Mostly this is due to the performance of Honor Swinton Byrne as Hogg’s autobiographical stand-in from her film school days. I’m tempted to say presence, as it hardly seems like she’s performing. Byrne beautifully captures the quietude, naïveté and loyalty of her character. So much so I’m looking forward to the sequel.

Currently streaming free for Prime members.

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senseabove
Joined: Wed Dec 02, 2015 3:07 am

Re: The Films of 2019

#3 Post by senseabove » Thu Dec 12, 2019 4:21 pm

The Souvenir, Joanna Hogg
SpoilerShow
Mild, indirect spoilers for Almodovar's Pain & Glory in the sentence beginning "On the other...". I had somehow avoided any discussion of this as an addiction drama, and I'm of two minds that the trailer rather skillfully and pointedly avoids revealing it. On the one hand, I doubt I would have queued this up if I'd known it was anything other than the poignant, well-crafted "first love" drama it was billed as. I let out an audible "Oh no..." and a groan of fear when Julie first asks him what the sore in his elbow pit is and he brushes it off. And the rest of the movie is as excruciating and accurate as I would have feared, so, uh.... triggered, I guess? Because yes, you really are that willfully blind in the middle of all of it. On the other, this, Cukor's A Star is Born, and Pain & Glory might be my own personal "in love with an addict" catharsis trilogy, ending blessedly on the only one that retains some sliver of, probably fantastic, hope.
That being the case, the notion that folks found this cold, distant, etc., is a truly bizarro world experience for me. Listening to Michael Koresky (I think it was), who ranked it his #1 of the year, talk about it on the Film Comment Best of 2019 podcast, I got the sense that he also had first-hand experience with this situation, and I wonder if that's just how this one works: if you know it, it's exceptionally powerful. Maybe that makes it a failure in a broad sense, if it didn't convey that experience to those who don't already know it, but as an exercise in catharsis for those who, like me, do, I found this deeply moving.

I'll highlight one element of technique: Hogg's patient building of the space of the soundstage and her use of depth in her framing works as an emotionally succinct way of portraying the slow process of finding the necessary distance from the pain of realization and loss. Those shots built around Julie, the soundstage door, the payphone, and the camera positioned toward and away from and on either side of the door are a logic problem for working out that distance, how to position yourself to look at that pain.
SpoilerShow
Compare this to Mia Hansen-Løve's Goodbye First Love: when you lose your love to their addiction, there is no "natural" progress of getting over it. It's a love sheered off by circumstances. You never get the experience of falling out of love, because you did not lose them to themselves but to an all-consuming monster. You never get the experience of watching them become someone you've outgrown or watching them outgrow you. You get nothing but loss, anger, and pity.
If there's a logical coldness, it's why that final sequence is so effective for me. That technical distance is necessary—for her, for me—to approach a topic so white hot even years later. That double dolly and the blunt, open stare... Half of me is eager to watch this again, now knowing what I'm getting into, and half of me thinks I could stand to wait a few more years...

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ianthemovie
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Re: The Films of 2019

#4 Post by ianthemovie » Thu Dec 12, 2019 5:30 pm

senseabove wrote:
Thu Dec 12, 2019 4:21 pm
The Souvenir, Joanna Hogg
SpoilerShow
Mild, indirect spoilers for Almodovar's Pain & Glory in the sentence beginning "On the other...". I had somehow avoided any discussion of this as an addiction drama, and I'm of two minds that the trailer rather skillfully and pointedly avoids revealing it. On the one hand, I doubt I would have queued this up if I'd known it was anything other than the poignant, well-crafted "first love" drama it was billed as. I let out an audible "Oh no..." and a groan of fear when Julie first asks him what the sore in his elbow pit is and he brushes it off. And the rest of the movie is as excruciating and accurate as I would have feared, so, uh.... triggered, I guess? Because yes, you really are that willfully blind in the middle of all of it. On the other, this, Cukor's A Star is Born, and Pain & Glory might be my own personal "in love with an addict" catharsis trilogy, ending blessedly on the only one that retains some sliver of, probably fantastic, hope.
That being the case, the notion that folks found this cold, distant, etc., is a truly bizarro world experience for me. Listening to Michael Koresky (I think it was), who ranked it his #1 of the year, talk about it on the Film Comment Best of 2019 podcast, I got the sense that he also had first-hand experience with this situation, and I wonder if that's just how this one works: if you know it, it's exceptionally powerful. Maybe that makes it a failure in a broad sense, if it didn't convey that experience to those who don't already know it, but as an exercise in catharsis for those who, like me, do, I found this deeply moving.

I'll highlight one element of technique: Hogg's patient building of the space of the soundstage and her use of depth in her framing works as an emotionally succinct way of portraying the slow process of finding the necessary distance from the pain of realization and loss. Those shots built around Julie, the soundstage door, the payphone, and the camera positioned toward and away from and on either side of the door are a logic problem for working out that distance, how to position yourself to look at that pain.
SpoilerShow
Compare this to Mia Hansen-Løve's Goodbye First Love: when you lose your love to their addiction, there is no "natural" progress of getting over it. It's a love sheered off by circumstances. You never get the experience of falling out of love, because you did not lose them to themselves but to an all-consuming monster. You never get the experience of watching them become someone you've outgrown or watching them outgrow you. You get nothing but loss, anger, and pity.
If there's a logical coldness, it's why that final sequence is so effective for me. That technical distance is necessary—for her, for me—to approach a topic so white hot even years later. That double dolly and the blunt, open stare... Half of me is eager to watch this again, now knowing what I'm getting into, and half of me thinks I could stand to wait a few more years...
I was one of those who found this cold and distant, as I posted about this a couple of pages back when I first saw it back in June. I did find much about it to admire and there is a truly excruciating story there, but Hogg's filmmaking continues to turn me off. Perhaps the aesthetic distance from this subject matter is necessary as you say, but I found her earlier film Unrelated to suffer from the same tonal problem(s), and so far as I know that's a film that is not autobiographically informed. (I found it interesting that even Martin Scorsese--who has since become an admirer of Hogg and even helped produce this film I believe--confessed that he felt a similar lack of emotional investment when he saw one of her films for the first time, as he recalled in his recent Lincoln Center talk.)

I will say I absolutely loved the shot in which
SpoilerShow
we see in the background that one of the mirrored panels on the wall of Byrne's apartment has been smashed; the characters are just sitting at dinner talking about something else, and the broken mirror is just in the background and is never acknowledged, leaving us to imagine how it came to be broken--presumably in another one of the Tom Burke character's fits. That single detail was crushing.

nitin
Joined: Sat Nov 08, 2014 6:49 am

Re: The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019)

#5 Post by nitin » Thu Dec 12, 2019 10:46 pm

I have no direct or indirect experience with addiction but this worked brilliantly for me, as I said elsewhere it was quite effective in making the deeply personal seem universal.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019)

#6 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Dec 13, 2019 1:25 am

SpoilerShow
As I’ve mentioned vaguely on the forum before, I usually have pretty strong feelings about cinematic depictions of addiction, take from that what you will. What worked so well about the way this narrative played out was the choice to view events completely subjectively from Julie’s perspective. It’s specific to the experience of falling in love and only seeing fragments of the person, red flags and attractive qualities battling against each other through one space to filter such feelings. She was the subject, her inner conflict producing a kind of personal growth that isn’t measured by a series of progressive actions but the process by which she experiences and reacts to these stressors that surprise, scare, and haunt her as she tries to act in accordance with her conscience to be both an empathetic selfless person and true to her own needs. Because the addict was not the subject but an object of love as the focal point of her own growth, his symptoms don’t need to reflect actuality, his development doesn’t need to be sensitive to the disease, but they do need to be reflective and sensitive to her experience torn between helplessness and an initiative to help the man she loves.

For the record, I thought his performance from this angle was mesmerizing, and there were parts of his portrayal of an addict that could not have been more right, especially when looking from the outside in, horror by observation. The latest A Star Is Born did the opposite in doing a phenomenal job providing an intensely sensitive and authentic subjective portrayal of an addict but it failed when trying to add in Gaga and co’s perspectives as significant others affected and trying to make sense of his perspective late in the film, throwaway one-liners in response to the recovery piece that felt cheap, tacked on, unrealistic, insincere, and frankly invalidating. That film didn’t have to spend time on this area, but it chose to in not even half-measures and the result was as awkward as the writing process probably was in coming up with the one or two lines in the film that dance around the issue uncomfortably. The Souvenir is consistent in telling the precise story from the exact vantage point it needs to, and delivers on all fronts. But it’s not really a movie about addiction at all, despite its relationship to the content, as the themes are more universal, as nitin said, to that internal pull of the self in a relationship with another, when you can’t control them and yet you feel you must to keep them. A path that many go down and that ultimately leads to pain, anxiety, and personal growth, but never without scarring.

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senseabove
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Re: The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019)

#7 Post by senseabove » Fri Dec 13, 2019 3:50 am

ianthemovie wrote:
Thu Dec 12, 2019 5:30 pm
I will say I absolutely loved the shot in which
SpoilerShow
we see in the background that one of the mirrored panels on the wall of Byrne's apartment has been smashed; the characters are just sitting at dinner talking about something else, and the broken mirror is just in the background and is never acknowledged, leaving us to imagine how it came to be broken--presumably in another one of the Tom Burke character's fits. That single detail was crushing.
Completely... Apt, especially after twbb's comments about the film's PoV, that Film Comment chose this as its cover image for their cover story on the film:
SpoilerShow
Image
I haven't seen any of Hogg's other films, though I'm very curious to now. I'm also very curious what the already-announced sequel to this will be like...
therewillbeblus wrote:
Fri Dec 13, 2019 1:25 am
SpoilerShow
But it’s not really a movie about addiction at all, despite its relationship to the content, as the themes are more universal, as nitin said, to that internal pull of the self in a relationship with another, when you can’t control them and yet you feel you must to keep them. A path that many go down and that ultimately leads to pain, anxiety, and personal growth, but never without scarring.
SpoilerShow
Perhaps I was too close to it to see the universality in it, due to its focus on the subjective experience you describe, twbb. I confess I was certainly too blind-sided by the subject to be in any way objective about the movie's content, and I was much more focused on her than him, as the movie intended, per your observations. I wonder what you'd say to the idea that the 'universal' "internal pull... when you can't control them and yet you feel you must to keep them" is intensified to a unique degree in a relationship with an addict, an intensity that feels perfectly encapsulated in the scene in Cukor's ASiB with Garland and her manager between takes of "Lose That Long Face." But maybe I should ask you what your hourly rate is first!

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019)

#8 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 14, 2019 2:13 am

senseabove wrote:
Fri Dec 13, 2019 3:50 am
SpoilerShow
I wonder what you'd say to the idea that the 'universal' "internal pull... when you can't control them and yet you feel you must to keep them" is intensified to a unique degree in a relationship with an addict
SpoilerShow
That’s where it would be pretty hard for me to remain objective! Nor do I want to be professing myself as the resident “expert” on substance abuse, which is something I try to restrain my commentary on in various domains of my life. What I will say is that I believe there is a very intangible and inexplicable grasp that we have on the disease of addiction. Many people struggle to accept it as a disease because it’s so foggy and we understand so little (and because what with, alcohol especially, as the number one coping mechanism for most adults across professions in western cultures, the relatability aspect is lacking when we naturally use ourselves as the focal point to measure our comprehension of another’s behaviors. If you can have x amount of drinks and stop but someone else cannot, how can that seem like anything but a lack of will power given your experience, particularly when woven into a culture so deeply?)

I think this very understandable and reasonable naiveté regarding addiction is one foundational element that unconsciously contributes to this intense dissonance between a non-addict and an addict, and this can obviously extend to romantic relationships. I also think, though, that beyond this analysis specific to a person living with addiction, there exist universal similarities in other extreme mental health disorders (of which addiction is one), and when engaging in a romantic partnership, the most vulnerable of social experiences in which we can’t help but blend with that other person, this will impact such harmony. For example, dating someone who is living with Bipolar disorder, anxiety, depression, Borderline personality disorder, just to name a few common ones, will involve an extra set of variables that are not as controllable and potentially very intense and debilitating, not to mention invisible, to the person experiencing them let alone their partner, that only add a layer to the already difficult process of merging with another person who has their own unique perspective in life (I don’t mean to suggest this to be a lost cause; my partner and myself have multiple of these or other mental health issues ourselves and I’m optimistic about our abilities to be continuously working through these obstacles towards harmony - as these obstacles mimic those that exist in all relationships, given innate and formed personality differences).

In this specific case though, the guy is addicted to heroin; and regardless of the substance, there’s a progression in an addicted person that ultimately results in what people in many addiction communities call a “spiritual loss of values” aka committing acts of cognitive dissonance that stray from one’s own morals as the will power cannot override the addiction (be it the facets of physical, compulsions, obsessions, etc.) This amplifies that person’s out-of-control-behaviors, and the multifaceted disease/mental health disorder/spiritual condition/however you define it- of addiction will catapult the already impossible feat of changing or controlling your partner’s behavior to a space even more impossible; for their lack of control, willingness, or will power defeats themselves and they must at least have some of those pieces of stability for such harmony to be possible. In essence, two people in a relationship are already dealing with the absurd situation of achieving a union between two different perspectives, regardless of how similar one’s interests, values, or personality types are- everyone is unique and if you’re in a relationship with no problems at all, then you’re probably not seeing them (I believe a healthy relationship has skilled partners on both sides who can communicate, prioritize the relationship, and thus work through them and even cause them, in some occasions, not to seem like problems at all!) The addiction or mental health component only adds that layer that is difficult to see or make sense of and can cloud this process, though addiction in particular is challenging because the person experiencing it often cannot prioritize anything beyond the drug, and if they can they’re sharing those values with that selfish seeking for a substance, which - at best - makes this harmony fractured and doesn’t act in reciprocity if the other partner does possess those skills, and - at worst - well, you have this movie as exhibit A and sadly something I’ve seen and continue to see enough of in my personal life.

I’m happy to PM anyone who wants it my favorite video that explains addiction from a clinical stance, basically talking about how human beings have a finite amount of will power and how this can be strengthened through various avenues, but how isolation and other factors can halt the ability to allot that will power towards other parts of one’s life, including relationships. The video can be applied to anyone outside of addiction which is why I love it so much (strengthening will power simply reduces stress and strengthens those skills), and it’s directly impacted the way I think about the world and how I utilize certain proactive measures to stay grounded and fit to execute actions based on my own principles in awareness of that finite amount of will power; awareness and willingness being the dual ingredients I see as the foundation to initiating change through action. Alright, that’s enough out of me, I’ve done exactly what I intended not to, but I hope I somewhat answered your question.

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soundchaser
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Re: Trailers for Upcoming Films

#9 Post by soundchaser » Wed Sep 29, 2021 2:08 pm

The Souvenir Part II

I liked the first film well enough, but this looks like a totally different animal.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019)

#10 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Oct 30, 2021 12:36 am

It took two watches for me to fall in love with this film- appropriately so, given Hogg's deliberate style of forced adjustment to its fragmented narrative of tainted, subjective memory, that I imagine left many viewers (including myself initially) cold and distanced from the involving step-by-step romance we've come to expect from cinema. Of course the gradual reveals of darkness help formulate this cumulative effect of empathy for a surrogate so blinded by love, though it's the unique format of storytelling that demands patient acclimation to sanction rewards, intentionally forgoing plot for psychology, uniquely mashing aloof austerity with raw intimate experience. It's as if Hoggs cannot decide whether she wants to relive the trauma or study it from afar, so we are granted this inner conflict via oscillating vantage points in form, a behaviorist study of emotions in the elisions.

I relate to both characters on a very personal level, but while many great movies have been made for members of the addiction communities to connect with, this might be the most respectfully mature and intuitive depiction of the willful participation of an abused hostage to an addict put on celluloid. This is a movie for Al-Anons, a population in desperate need of a film to call their own. It's not a blame game, but a film that acknowledges feelings of shame without affirming them, postures at guilt without regret, and boldly recognizes love without anxiously explaining the logic of its reasons to an audience that won't understand through conventional narrative fluidity. The artifice would only soil our comprehension, cause us to turn on our lead with judgment, and the only authentic way Hoggs can speak her truth is to provide us with her own recollection that defies logic and rests solely in emotion. That's why people engage in and stay in relationships like this- so if we ask for another modality for absorption, do we really want to know what this was like, or are we requesting an artist to conform a foreign nightmare into a digestible track for our own comfort? The willingness to reside in restless, elastic ellipses will make or break this film's impact, but a second viewing seems vital for those who can stomach it. I can't wait to see the self-reflexive processing of truth and fantasy in inherently-skewed, but indisputably real memory from unconditionally valid feelings and impressionistic experience in The Souvenir Part II next week.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg, 2019)

#11 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Nov 07, 2021 1:30 am

[Mods, feel free to move this to a separate thread/Films of 2021, though since the sequel functions as a second part to this film, I figured this would be as good a place as any to write about it]

After the transient nature of scattered scenes that emulated Hogg's selected memory in the first film, The Souvenir Part II begins with unexpectedly stationary attention to seemingly irrelevant details as Julie recuperates from the shock of her loss at home. It's a staggering opening that brings anyone (everyone by a certain age, I'd think) who's been blindsided by a traumatic event back to that state of heightened/subdued temperaments, where time is slowed, we are physically stagnant and hypervigilant to each object our eyes turn to, the minute gestures and banal conversations that populate the frames of our exhausted recovery. The film then shifts back into fragmented blips of memory, but the meditation on that initial stage is deliberate and respectful to the acuity of life crises without selling it with spectacle.

The residual effects still follow Julie as she encounters objects that produce significance, and people that will not wilt in the search for demanding tangible answers. Julie herself doesn't want to- or cannot- let go of the disorientation and is absorbed in a futile search herself, prompted by these objects, people, intrusive thoughts, feelings, and recollections. So Hogg creates the only authentic second work she can- an unapologetic, intentional decision to formulate meaning through art, through sharing her perspective on fleeting events. The combination of true and false forges a more thorough truth; the reality of our experience looking back on the people that formed us prohibits an impossible objectivity, and is deterministically subjective from our vantage point. Hogg/Julie is empowered to create a tangible document in one of the few ways anyone can (and if only we all had access to that platform of artistic tools, we would).

The film doesn't only focus on this artistic process though, and it would be disingenuous to frame this as a story of the art of processing "loss" when it's also a form of art about "finding"- finding oneself, meaning, an identity of maturity from those we encounter, old and new. We watch Julie attempt to engage in new relationships, and eventually winds up in a sober space where her research tells her she's not ready yet. An earlier scene of that research, however, involves a one-night stand filmed with raw close camera angles, documenting the chaotic act of sex in a jarring alternative to the first film's omission of these scenes entirely. Hogg is not a prude, and we can contrast these relationships to discern that for her the sex with Anthony was not the standout memory of their time together, while it absolutely was for her trialed acclimation back into forcing 'feeling' with this new guy, to escape the uncomfortable numbness permeating her existence. The messy rebound, as she wants to want her emotions to be restored to equilibrium but cannot evade the hyperawareness to her fragile state, is honestly conveyed here in a wildly different manner- from the content to the camera's intimacy. Hogg's flexibility in the first film's style is even more drastically-bent here; she is unrelenting in filming her schematic picture of self-reflexive experience externalized into this schematic picture on celluloid.

The advice she gets from her closest friend is to commit to passion and passion alone, rather than consider the commercial appeal of audiences, as this passion will translate more deeply with audiences' own subjective experiences. Julie continues to observe objects and discover imagery for significance of Anthony, recovering and processing feelings at once. Yes, this is life imitating art in a meta-context as therapy, but we already knew that. The question is whether or not it's self-indulgent, and if that's a negative or a positive avenue for such a personal film to take; a question that is excavated throughout the narrative of Part II. Memory is authentic only within individualized subjectivity, accepting our compromised limitations to yield infinite possibilities. She is concocting a fantasy that is abstract enough to forge deeper intimacy with the audience. Time is taken to hone in on Julie's mother discussing a sugar jar she made that is imperfect, but personal and a source of great pride. If Julie's film can be that, maybe that's enough.

But there's a road to get to that acceptance for Julie- and this is a great film about collaboration and isolation as two inevitable states of being she oscillates between; whether in the relationship with Anthony or her relationship with her crew- in one scene hurting a friend's feelings by not casting her because she doesn't fit within Julie's vision of the character, and in another, receiving support from a friend only to make a pass and receive an awkward, alienating response. We need support from others to help provide us with feedback, inspiration, and affection, but these are fleeting and we are also destined to endure our thoughts and feelings, and hold onto our perspectives alone. Julie/Hogg has a unique mind that cannot be communicated in fullness with others, and this dissonance is at the heart of the film. Two perspectives simply don't ever align, and this consequential, inherent discord is agonizing for all involved on Julie's student film within this film, especially when one of those points of view is held onto with such fervent rigidity.

Julie is controlling as a director, demanding to capture her emotions and perspective of events meticulously, but (of course) she cannot communicate this verbally to her crew! I love how Hogg self-consciously follows her stand-in in this struggle to explain the relationship dynamics, both laughing at and empathizing with her younger self. Julie wants to show herself as a hostage, which she was, and explains that she was disempowered by Anthony, but she also shamefully admits her codependent lengths of avoidance of truth, and inaction to remove herself from the situation. It's a great pain that will lead to growth in working through these complex thoughts and feelings, looking at herself in hindsight; but for now she's trying to recreate Anthony's psychology and her own, when both are undeniably enigmatic and incommunicable. Hogg is demonstrating the internal struggle of artists to create something authentic, but in doing so there's a secondary, more profound focus on humility.

Humility- the surrender of self, mixes with solipsism, as the incongruities continue- but perhaps authenticity in art necessitates inauthentic artificiality and delusion. I love how one peer from the crew complains about "not knowing what is going on" with fury, self-consciously mirroring Julie's own frustration with the fatalistic incapacity to grasp her own experience in a linear, digestible form. To follow a script may be helpful for the crew to find order in "truth," but it's dishonest to the art she needs to express, which can only be actualized based on impermanent, dynamic shifts in mood- Julie's emotional state and mental imagery in the moment of filming. This is why Godard's scriptless work is so powerful to some of us, despite the artists making very different films (I certainly didn't expect to think of Godard while watching this movie!)

Ayoade serves as the opposite kind of filmmaker, showing up with more screen time in a histrionic performance, as someone who is equally controlling of his crew but in a different approach. He needs ultra-attentive specifics from his crew-as-audience to give him a sense of direction where to go in the next scene, while she leaves everything too abstract as ineffable feeling. He needs to be spoonfed what to feel, which obstructs the possibilities of personalized relatedness between the content and the viewer as consumer of the material. Ayoade cannot comprehend that when his peer group say they love his art but cannot articulate 'why', this is not a problem but an affirmation of customized value that cannot be expressed properly in words.

Ultimately, Julie must surrender to the unavoidable condition of grief, and the unattainable answers to our own wants, needs, and sources of our psychology. That doesn't mean the gift, or souvenir, Anthony gave her is not meaningful, but her agency can be empowered without a firm grip on what cannot be accessed in harmony. "You're a human being with life to live. That's your job," her therapist tells her, and while perhaps a bit hamfisted and concisely-guided, it's an aptly vague and pressing prompt from a therapist, if there ever was one. After watching Julie work through these dissonant impulses throughout the film, the set of the premiere made me emotional without even seeing the film play out. The idea of raising imaginary glasses to those we've lost means everything. It's all we can do, to hold those people in our memory, and allow their lives to have infinite meaning by pausing our consciousnesses on how they've affected ours.
SpoilerShow
The dream sequence that follows is a showstopping setpiece that admirably refuses to grant us easy signifiers- mimicking the acceptance Julie/Hogg has found around this herself. The only exception is the impotence for catharsis- when Julie asks Anthony "Do you still love me?" which goes unanswered as he dies in front of her. We then skip ahead in time and return to a scene intentionally replicating the party at the start of the first film when Julie first met Anthony, though this is her 30th birthday party and she's finally self-actualized, comfortable in her own skin, wiser, perceptive, and happy.

The final shot through the window, outside of Julie's perspective, directly violates her own earlier reactive micromanagement at the camera setup not capturing her point of view through that very same window. We hear Hogg herself yell, "Cut!" and the camera pans for us to see her film crew filming her story before this film ends. Does this signify growth through letting go, acceptance in art as inherently compromised, a partial surrender of the will, and an admittance and recontextualization of what fantasy can be outside of rigid parameters? Or is it also perhaps an exhibition of further elusivity- the limitations of art, as this film cannot go on forever, cannot bring Anthony back, and cannot actualize her experience fully for us to grasp in totem, or for Hogg to hold with permanence. Her film could have ended on a cathartic memory of growth through the surrogate character of Julie, but no- it must end with Hogg in the midst of her own development in the current moment. The camera is divorced from Hogg and her crew, the fantasy is over, and Hogg couldn't be further away from the lens; out of sight, alone again in life 'in media res', just like all of us. So is it self-indulgent? Sure, but only authentically so.

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Re: The Souvenir: Parts I & II (Joanna Hogg, 2019/2021)

#12 Post by swo17 » Wed Jun 22, 2022 11:24 am


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Matt
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Re: The Souvenir: Parts I & II (Joanna Hogg, 2019/2021)

#13 Post by Matt » Wed Jun 22, 2022 3:34 pm

Disappointing that it won’t be a Criterion release, but I can’t imagine what they could have added to it (apart from a slightly lower price point).

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Re: The Souvenir: Parts I & II (Joanna Hogg, 2019/2021)

#14 Post by soundchaser » Wed Jun 22, 2022 3:45 pm

I'm surprised it's not being released in 4K, since it feels like it would be the definitive version of both films' mixed media forms. The short at the end of Part II would be stunning.

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Matt
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Re: The Souvenir: Parts I & II (Joanna Hogg, 2019/2021)

#15 Post by Matt » Fri Dec 02, 2022 2:17 am

We don't have a dedicated thread for it (nor a general Joanna Hogg thread), but her 2022 film, The Eternal Daughter has just been released day-and-date in theaters and on VOD ($15, purchase only) in the US. Will be available to rent on December 16. Is this even scheduled for a theatrical release in the UK?

Marvelous retro-style poster, which looks like it could be for the old Liz Taylor shocker Night Watch

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Re: The Souvenir: Parts I & II (Joanna Hogg, 2019/2021)

#16 Post by DarkImbecile » Fri Dec 02, 2022 12:28 pm

Matt wrote:
Fri Dec 02, 2022 2:17 am
We don't have a dedicated thread for it (nor a general Joanna Hogg thread)...
Subtle hint noted!

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Re: The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg, 2022)

#17 Post by hearthesilence » Fri Dec 02, 2022 1:14 pm

Matt wrote:
Fri Dec 02, 2022 2:17 am
We don't have a dedicated thread for it (nor a general Joanna Hogg thread), but her 2022 film, The Eternal Daughter has just been released day-and-date in theaters and on VOD ($15, purchase only) in the US. Will be available to rent on December 16. Is this even scheduled for a theatrical release in the UK?

Marvelous retro-style poster, which looks like it could be for the old Liz Taylor shocker Night Watch
It's getting a theatrical release THIS weekend. In fact, Metrograph has a screening tonight with Martin Scorsese doing a Q&A with Hogg, then both will be doing another Q&A tomorrow afternoon at Lincoln Center. (Both events have sold out, but you can try standby for the latter.)

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Matt
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Joanna Hogg

#18 Post by Matt » Sat Dec 03, 2022 2:43 am

I’m in a small town in the Upper Midwest, alas, so it’s VOD for me. Which is quite all right, as I’ve never been able to see any previous Joanna Hogg film in a theater anyway, and I will want to revisit this one more than once.

I should probably gather my thoughts better before I start spouting off here, but:

This is a film difficult to talk about without spoiling in some way, so
SpoilerShow
I’ll tag the whole thing.

Without fact-checking myself, I would say that this is probably the best gothic horror (or haunted house) film I’ve seen since The Others, 21 years ago. I doubt that many would consider it a horror film at all, though.

Joanna Hogg is so, so good at being metatextual without being annoying about it that this is a “gothic horror film” that knows it is deliberately using the most hackneyed gothic horror tropes and effects (fog, shadows, strange noises in the night) to tell a very moving and realistic story about grief and loss and memory and about how those are the real phantoms and demons we fight with late at night. And that’s an insultingly glib summary, but it’s getting late.

This is all but in name and style The Souvenir Part III (with TS reprising her role as well as playing an older version of her character’s daughter [which is in fact a version of the filmmaker herself] who TS’s real-life daughter played in the two official installments!) It stands on its own because it’s a strong story in itself and the visual style and sound design are quite different (yet more of a piece with JH’s work previous to The Souvenir).

I think it is , at least in some respect, a direct homage to the Liz Taylor film I cheekily referenced above as well as to several other “isolated woman sees and hears things at night” films, but it also directly shows several paperback novels at points in the film, including a couple that look like they were published by Virago, a British imprint known for publishing psychologically-oriented short novels by women that I can, without knowing her, guarantee that Joanna Hogg is deeply familiar with. It feels like it could be an adaptation of some nearly forgotten Barbara Comyns or Elizabeth Taylor (the writer one) novel, which is a very good thing.
But that’s surely enough of me whistling around like a draft in an old house for now!

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Re: Joanna Hogg

#19 Post by senseabove » Sat Dec 03, 2022 4:13 am

Thanks to Matt's tipoff about this movie I'd been checking for periodically and yet somehow still missed it's seeming surprise drop—what is A24 even doing!?—I made an unexpected trip to the city for the one screen showing The Eternal Daughter in all of the Bay Area, and I think it was well worth it. It's my kind of horror movie—more gothic, less jumping—one that leans into the unsettling, the off-putting, the dis-ease of its situation without making them its sole purpose for existing, and pretends a few of those elements are so natural you hardly notice them, like the peculiar, nearly perpetual twilight this possibly empty hotel seems to exist in. The dual performance from Tilda is excellent, showboating a little if only because she really is that good at portraying two completely different characters who seem distinctly related, down to the distinct consistency in how differently each character holds her mouth when talking over a meal or pets a dog nosing for attention in the middle of a conversation. The movie being 50% S/RSs of her talking to herself gives you ample time to watch the display of unconscious overlaps and wilful divergences, and it quickly becomes another of the unsettling elements. It's also one of the most gorgeous recent films I've seen in a while—Ed Rutherford's cinematography counterposes a cold, wintry blue and a warm, sunny red so deftly so frequently and in such shadowy, foggy terrain that mid-movie I already found myself looking forward to a future revisit with the sound off.

Also, as Matt points out, books feature indistinctly but prominently through the movie, and one of them, whose opening page we clearly see, though never its cover or author, is Kay Dick's beautifully unsettling They, which I, coincidentally, stumbled upon as an Employee Pick in a bookstore, took a closer look due to the cover blurbs from Hilton Als and the bio mentioning that she ran with two of my favorite writers, Ivy Compton-Burnett and Muriel Spark, and suggested my book club read a few months ago. Highly, highly recommended if this film strikes a chord.

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Matt
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Joanna Hogg

#20 Post by Matt » Sat Dec 03, 2022 4:17 am

I only discovered the release myself when I was wondering when A24 was finally going to put it out I and saw that the answer was literally the next day. At some point, I’ll go through the film and identify all the books shown. Unless some other Joanna Hogg stan does it first.
Last edited by Matt on Sat Dec 03, 2022 4:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Joanna Hogg

#21 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Dec 04, 2022 1:21 pm

I wanted to like this more than I did, especially after warming a lot to The Souvenir and finding The Souvenir Part II to be a profound achievement in self-reflexive filmmaking. I suppose this is the logical next step for Hogg, to make The Souvenir Part III without exactly intending to- cultivating a far more elliptical and haunting temporally-grounded exposition of the present. The gothic atmosphere was utilized effectively in this respect, and I think there's something admirable about how Hogg aesthetically and narratively conveys that the present time is often nebulous, enhancing our impotence to evade the gravitational inertia of its restraints, compared to the past where we can issue control and unpack cherry-picked thoughts and feelings as we choose from a safe vantage point. There's just so much material in 'the past' (what a vast and resourceful place that is!) that has taken on layered meaning for us, no matter how powerless we are to change events- though I also think this emphasizes a problem with this film: That regardless of this awareness, and the appropriate genre and tonal applications to validate her sobriety, Hogg's engagement with a state of surrender to being 'stuck' just isn't as interesting as her more labile engagement with past triggers of current trauma. I feel that the her last two films' most absorbing components occurred in the implicit struggle between Hogg's desire to restrain herself, remain objective, etc. and her inescapable human impulse to get emotionally invested and skew events. I detected a lot less of that conflict here, perhaps because she wasn't engaging in the mission of tapping into the inherently flawed and triggering device of memory, as much as trying to capture the active submission in reflecting her current state. That doesn't mean that there's no resistance in this film -there is- but I found Hogg's formal expression of that resistance (coming both from within, and external reminders of her corporeal limits to access what her emotions and thoughts desperately vie to make tangible) more successful in both Souvenirs, even if this film is going for a different and more meditative and stagnant obfuscation in its designed conceit.

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Re: Joanna Hogg

#22 Post by senseabove » Sat Dec 10, 2022 1:19 am

senseabove wrote:
Sat Dec 03, 2022 4:13 am
Also, as Matt points out, books feature indistinctly but prominently through the movie, and one of them, whose opening page we clearly see, though never its cover or author, is Kay Dick's beautifully unsettling They, which I, coincidentally, stumbled upon as an Employee Pick in a bookstore, took a closer look due to the cover blurbs from Hilton Als and the bio mentioning that she ran with two of my favorite writers, Ivy Compton-Burnett and Muriel Spark, and suggested my book club read a few months ago. Highly, highly recommended if this film strikes a chord.
Turns out, per this joint interview with Scorsese and Hogg, that it’s Kipling’s They… so, um, whoops, but I still think Dick’s They is a relevant reference!

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Re: Joanna Hogg

#23 Post by ianthemovie » Tue May 16, 2023 8:36 pm

In trying to find out any information about a possible Blu-ray release of The Eternal Daughter I came across a number of listings for DVD and Blu-ray copies held by various public libraries, with several mentioning a release date of March 21 2023 and listing Lionsgate as a distributor. Curiously, the status of all of these copies is either "on hold" or something to that effect. Does anyone know if any such release actually exists?

Relatedly, upon digging up this thread I was confounded to see myself listed as the author of the original post listing Hogg's filmography and links to interviews, which I'm certain I did not write!

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Re: Joanna Hogg

#24 Post by swo17 » Tue May 16, 2023 8:56 pm

Your original post is quoted in the second post of the thread. This is how mods split off threads sometimes

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Matt
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Joanna Hogg

#25 Post by Matt » Tue May 16, 2023 11:30 pm

ianthemovie wrote:In trying to find out any information about a possible Blu-ray release of The Eternal Daughter I came across a number of listings for DVD and Blu-ray copies held by various public libraries, with several mentioning a release date of March 21 2023 and listing Lionsgate as a distributor. Curiously, the status of all of these copies is either "on hold" or something to that effect. Does anyone know if any such release actually exists?
You’re seeing placeholder records for DVD/Blu-ray “pre-orders” from a particular vendor to public libraries, Midwest Tape. It’s listed as “coming soon” in Midwest Tape’s March catalog with no actual release date, but that really means nothing. Just that if and when it ever comes out, this vendor will send it to these libraries.

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