The Souvenir (2019, Joanna Hogg)

I am in my forties, so when am I gonna start making up my own mind about movies? Here’s a doomed-young-love-addiction story that looks and sounds unappealing, like not really my sort of thing, and it makes the year-end lists and I think oh that’s a good movie I should watch, but low priority, and then the sequel is announced for Cannes and suddenly I need to watch it right away, but it turns out somewhat unappealing, like not really my sort of thing. And then a week after I watch it, reviews are coming in for the sequel, a working-through-grief story that looks and sounds unappealing, and I am almost definitely gonna see it.

Me watching The Souvenir II next year:

I do appreciate watching cinema in which characters argue over what is cinema, and also hearing The Fall in a movie. Tilda Swinton’s daughter is charmingly Tilda-Swinton’s-daughter-like, and her mom plays her mom – a lovely moment where she sleeps over and cries with her unhappy daughter. I didn’t get the post-it trail to a car bomb, but maybe that was a typical British activity in the 80’s. Honor’s heroin boy (Tom Burke, just played Welles in Mank) once steals her stuff, then gets her to apologize for being mad about it after some vague excuse that he’s keeping civilization safe, so maybe he bombs cars for the queen. Richard Ayoade MVP.