The Souvenir is a film akin to watching paint dry but that's almost an insult to paint. Director Joanna Hogg has no clue about trying to entertain her audience.
I have no wish to disparage the leading actress, Honor Swinton Byrne, but being Tilda Swinton's daughter is not a good enough reason to cast her as a leading lady in my humble estimation. I only watched this borefest because I knew Tom Burke from his excellent series Strike on TV but he just looks like he wonders why he agreed to be cast in this.
Basically, nothing happens. She's a film school student, not that we see any of her work, and he's a chain smoking drug addict. They all live in a middle upper class world of pretentiousness that revolves around things like her parents being so bored with life, they sit around the dinner table deciding what to do with their futures, like whether the mother for example, played by Tilda Swinton, should take up a new adult learning course and the father, to give up farming and take a course in history. Like we can all just do that or that we as the audience would care.
The camera barely moves at times and at one point an explosion occurs but all that happens is that our heroine glances out of her bedroom window. And that's it, no follow up.
Tedious in the extreme and the critic's reviews fooled me into watching. Beware as I was relieved when it ended.
I have no wish to disparage the leading actress, Honor Swinton Byrne, but being Tilda Swinton's daughter is not a good enough reason to cast her as a leading lady in my humble estimation. I only watched this borefest because I knew Tom Burke from his excellent series Strike on TV but he just looks like he wonders why he agreed to be cast in this.
Basically, nothing happens. She's a film school student, not that we see any of her work, and he's a chain smoking drug addict. They all live in a middle upper class world of pretentiousness that revolves around things like her parents being so bored with life, they sit around the dinner table deciding what to do with their futures, like whether the mother for example, played by Tilda Swinton, should take up a new adult learning course and the father, to give up farming and take a course in history. Like we can all just do that or that we as the audience would care.
The camera barely moves at times and at one point an explosion occurs but all that happens is that our heroine glances out of her bedroom window. And that's it, no follow up.
Tedious in the extreme and the critic's reviews fooled me into watching. Beware as I was relieved when it ended.