The Souvenir: how Joanna Hogg humanises ‘middle-class problems’
In the British writer-director’s fourth film, she tells an impactful, semi-autobiographical tale that puts the elite under the microscope
The fourth and best film to date by the British writer-director Joanna Hogg, The Souvenir is at once a piercingly honest confessional and a kind of audience-baiting provocation. At almost every turn in its supple, semi-autobiographical narrative, it practically begs snide viewers to dismiss it as a movie of “middle-class problems” – that popular satirical tag used and memed endlessly on social media to put the privileged and mildly (but vocally) inconvenienced in their place. The complaint may be as banal as a bag of unripe avocados from Waitrose or more headline-making – positive discrimination against private school students in the university admissions game, say – but the response is uniform: you could have it so much worse.
Related: The Souvenir review – Joanna Hogg back on form with sly, disconcerting drama