Joanna Hogg, painterly, modernist Brit filmmaker utilizing static frames, uneasy vibes

also, speaking of not spelling things out, especially for a non-British audience... I *almost* figured out what the repeated shots, and references to Julie's fondness for shopping at Harrods, was building up to. When the BOOM occurred, I knew what was up because I remember the event, but wonder how many younger Americans were puzzled.

No, just napping.

Richard Ayoade (hilarious) will be back in the sequel as the "c*nt" filmmaker; I was wondering if he was based on anyone who had a career...

I liked the screen presence of the POC giving her advice.

/Silence of the Lambs/ used "Hip Priest", could swear i've heard "TW" used before tho

I had almost forgotten Ariane Labed in the van scene near the end, but I couldn't really understand a bloody thing she was saying.

iMdB only mentions "TW" being used in an episode of "Skins."

Very few of us have the documentation of our early life that Hogg used to make this film.

from the New Yorker profile:

The night before the couple’s departure, the (Venice) trip was almost scuppered by an apparent robbery in Hogg’s apartment, in which her jewelry, her cameras, and other valuables were stolen. Hogg quickly realized that her lover had faked the theft, and had sold the items for drugs; nevertheless, the trip went ahead. “I had spent months planning, and didn’t want to give up on the plan,” Hogg said. “The show had to go on, and there was so much in the show—so much dreaming, all the ideas. It was creating a piece of work.”

The proximity of these scenes was confusing, to the degree where I wondered if the trip might not be a fantasy.

we need some kind of venn diagram that connects xyzzz and ward's politics to this sort of aristo masturbation fantasy.

LOL! I guess my answer would be, the film industry in Britain has always - with a few obvious exceptions - been utterly middle class, and I'm struggling to think of any 'creative' industry that isn't riddled with nepotism and the workings of the old boys' network. So I admire the fact that Hogg doesn't try to hide her poshness, or pretend to be something she's not; and (haven't seen this new one either) her films feel much more like a critique than a celebration of middle class privilege.

In a similar vein you can't help where or to what class you are born, its all material stuff to do things with, play with, things to discover and show and tell.

After the first Anthony breakup, the scene of the young man stripping and getting into bed with Julie drew uncontrollable giggles from a male Brooklyn filmgoer. Men are really not used to seeing nude men under the female gaze.

and dismissed as a trick!

I'm seeing online complaints that the relationship "had no context," which doesn't make any sense at all to me. There was all kinds of context!

The Souvenir now digitally available

I watched it again. Holds up like hell. How does anyone still think Julie and Anthony have no chemistry?

amusingly I watched this immediately following a set of conversations with a friend of mine who is concerned that contemporary film and storytelling are getting too self-obsessed/autobiographical/inward-looking due to fear of accusations of misrepresentation or falsehood. probably for the best I caught this one solo lol

Richard Ayoade (hilarious) will be back in the sequel as the "c*nt" filmmaker; I was wondering if he was based on anyone who had a career...

richard ayoade IS steve mcqueen in The Souvenir II: Souvenierer

If I didnt like "Exhibition", is there much chance I will like this one?

Was really enjoying the bougie dialogue and the odd couple relationship but fell asleep. I presume her character wasn't naive enough to take the old "had a bit of an accident" excuse when she sees the gammy arm with needle tracks! Definitely going watch it again from the start.

Michael B, as I liked Exhibition i can't say with any confidence, but it is different (while still recognizably hers).

This has more in common with Archipelago, notably the uses of lacunae,

that's a good word word to describe the vibe I was getting the other night which was a feeling of the emptiness of being around other people - if that makes any sense. I've never really got into her movies before but this one has piqued my interest. It's Hiddleston's furrowed brow and godawful acting that put me off her previous movies, can't deal with anything with that prick in it.

he's only in Exhibition for about 5 minutes tbf

Ah that's the one with Viv Albertine.. Thank god!

second view, clearly a great leap fwd

he seemed like less of a tosser this time

yep

I'll have to think about that whenever I do see it again because yeah, a negative charisma zone who thinks himself special. (Which, good job on the actor nailing that part of the character! A lesser actor wouldn't've managed it.) That said I take at face value the fact that there is an attraction, however invisible to me on the one hand but clearly shown in the film on the other.

That said I also think there's something to be said for reading this through a double lens of its setting in the past and in another country because viewing it from a 2019 lens meant that I couldn't help but think of the opiate explosion and lingering impact, and how we treat/talk about addiction now, but again, specifically, here, not the UK. As with other things in the film you fill in the gaps as you choose.

Music choices great, obv.

*SPOILERS, probably*

Interesting seeing this after the new Almodovar - two autobiographical films about filmmaker self-substitutes riddled with heroin that end almost identically, give or take a coda shot in Souvenir.

this was very exciting for an hour but the second half is significantly less interesting. my showing was preceded by an interview with JH in which she complained that her films are always judged through the prism of class but that class was "something she just wasn't very interested in" (!) i felt like shouting out "easy for you to say!"

Tom Burke is amazing in this. he really knows how to smoke on camera.

lol nonsense thing to say seeing as some of the dialogue/themes in her movie is about class and privilege, but I've only seen the first half so far.

weird af!

to be clear this was a filmed intro, not JH herself in the room.

so it would have been even weirder to shout out!

The Souvenir is brilliant. I don’t know what more people want sometimes.

how many of you are in Europe

I’m from western Maryland.

I just thought the guy this film was focused on was such a complete zero, it made it hard for me to watch

But not unrewarding.

there was something about it that was interesting, true

it more to do with her

had more

this wasn't very good imo. at least compared to her last two

kind of The Line Of Beauty as befalling a woman but without the...beauty. or the downfall. thirty years later, she became Joanna Hogg, filmmaker. kind of a dull denouement?autobiographical films c/d etc

some lovely shots (stick to the steady-cam stuff!) esp that one of them in the mirror in Venice but I couldn't like or be moved by any of the characters

yes there was downfall but only of a tawdry he-was-bad-news-all-along sort

and yes the line of beauty works THAT angle too but...better

I haven't seen her other films but I loathed this one precisely because the main characters were so unbearably uninteresting and completely predictable. A couple where one is an asshole junkie and the other is a doormat. Neither of them are compelling in the least...

But I will check out one of her other films... tonight hopefully

how do The Line of Beauty -- the novel, presumably -- and this film intersect?

young flawed aesthete enters new flawed milieu in the decade of exploding drug use and tries to have it all (in their own way) idk, it was constantly on my mind as I watched

themes of luxury, class, delusion, persistence

Watching this tonight after catching up with Archipelago and Exhibition on MUBI.

this was very exciting for an hour but the second half is significantly less interesting. my showing was preceded by an interview with JH in which she complained that her films are always judged through the prism of class but that class was "something she just wasn't very interested in" (!) i felt like shouting out "easy for you to say!"
Tom Burke is amazing in this. he really knows how to smoke on camera.
― Funky Isolations (jed_), Sunday, 1 September 2019 bookmarkflaglink

Like yeah definitely but it is a misrepresentation of her work if people are saying class is an interest for her because it plainly is not. She is basically making films about the kind of people she knows. The one time it does come in is the cook in Archipelago, but its a bit like Francoise in Proust, it has a character that is shown to be smart, something more (when she notices there was no painting in the room anymore and it certainly interacts with the guests - but class relations are done in a very short space of time) but it functions as a bit of relief to the goings on in the family's quiet cruelty to one another (this is a bit rough actually the cook is trapped a bit more in the goings on than I am making it sound, but the film doesn't spend a lot of time on this).

I think Duras' films were quite important for her in that respect. That way of observing people confined to a particular space except she makes the space seem incredibly attractive (Duras's spaces referred at times to a colonial past) at first, then as time goes on we see people in their own together -- and how spaces can enable that. It is barely about making people into something film-like in its attractiveness (British realism in a European style is quite a fusion I hadn't quite seen many Brit filmmakers pull off with such ease), her way of filming just allows them to be whatever they'd like to be -- a very striking quality when looking at Viv Albertine.

it's useful for me to see that lack of interest made explicit by her because it might be what keeps her stuff strictly at arm's length for me

oooh the Françoise analogy's a good 'un.