THE SKINNY
Friends Reunited Film
Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir: Part II sees Honor Swinton Byrne return as Julie, the young filmmaker trying to find her way in 80s London. But this is a steelier Julie than we saw in Part I. Swinton Byrne tells us about her connection to the character Words: Anahit Behrooz
February 2022 – Feature
T
he Souvenir – Joanna Hogg’s autofiction film of 2019 – ended with the off-screen death of its romantic hero, the heroin-dependent, Foreign Office civil servant Anthony (Tom Burke). A muffled phone call, shuddering sobs seen from behind, and a shot of a young woman grasping an abandoned blazer to her face and it was all over; a deeply felt relationship cut short, just like in life, as the credits rolled. Widely considered one of the best films of Hogg’s acclaimed career – and the decade – The Souvenir was extraordinary in its unfussed depiction of the ugliness of love and grief (love in grief, grief in love), and its attention to the formative ways that such love can break you open, even amid the most elegant of Kensington flats and privileged of lives. Directly based on the director’s own experiences as a young film student in 1980s London, The Souvenir was a Joanna Hogg film in every perfect way those words suggest: considered and muted and deeply concerned with how the studied detachment of the British upper classes pollutes the urgency of intimacy and desire. Yet arguably, what made it such a masterpiece within an already lauded filmography was its star (and Hogg’s goddaughter), Honor Swinton Byrne, who plays the sweet, naive film student Julie who falls for the older Anthony and is laid bare to the tragedy of his addiction. Swinton Byrne – who is the daughter of Scottish artist John Byrne and actor Tilda Swinton (who plays Julie’s mother in both The Souvenir and
The Souvenir: Part II) – hadn’t acted before her starring role, save her wordless cameo as a child in the 2009 Luca Guadagnino film I Am Love. But her Julie is, despite – or perhaps because of – her lack of experience within the industry, utterly captivating. Timid and earnest and disarmingly natural, her performance suggested an actor with decades of ease with the camera under their belt. With the mere clench of her jaw, flicker of griefheavy eyelids or tense shrug of her shoulders, Swinton Byrne could communicate entire volumes of strained devotion. Even before much else was known about it, the idea of The Souvenir Part II made sense, if only to reunite this actor with her well-worn protagonist. It is strange, in a way, meeting Swinton Byrne after almost three years of watching and rewatching Julie. She is irresistibly exuberant and effusive and, quite simply, happy to be there: happy to have returned to Julie and to gush about Julie’s ongoing journey in Part II, as you might enthuse about a friend coming through the other side of a rough patch. Within seconds, it is clear just what it was that made her Julie so magnetic. It isn’t that Swinton Byrne is secretly playing herself, using pure autobiographical performance as a conduit for naturalism (although, as it becomes clear, the boundaries between actor and character are remarkably porous). The real trick, it turns out, is that she loves Julie fiercely. “I view Julie like a friend, like a really best
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pal,” Swinton Byrne says warmly. “And I was just really heartbroken to watch her go through something so tough: she’s not quite getting back on her feet and she’s maybe not getting the help she needs. And so the second part was, for me, like this phoenix rising from the ashes. It was like a fucking reboot.” She laughs, giddy at the very thought. “She’s taking charge and she’s doing it by herself, which is a real key thing for me.
"I view Julie like a friend, like a really best pal" Honor Swinton Byrne “Joanna was very encouraging of me bringing a lot of myself to the character, particularly in the second one,” she adds. What was it about herself that shifted the tone of The Souvenir: Part II? “Feistiness! I like to think that’s a common trait… I hope I’m feisty!” She laughs again. “And passion. There is a scene where I am directing and I kept changing my mind, but I owned it and I say: ‘Right, OK, I actually thought I did want that but I don’t anymore.’ So just not being as apologetic, and owning things, owning mistakes.” In a memoir-ish film based on her godmother/director’s experiences, it is marked how often
