Lachlan Hadley

The Souvenir Part II

There's a scene about half-way through Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir Part II that I can't get out of my mind.  Julie, in the midst of making her graduate film based on her experience of being in a relationship with an illusory heroin addict, walks through the sound stage that contains her set.  It's a scene that eventually mirrors the divine final act, where Julie's creative voice finally culminates.  The image glows with the warm hue of pine, accentuated by its reflection in glass, and is then darkened as she walks across the black-and-white photography that resembles an exterior.  Layers of materials, fabrication, and memory are revealed.  The extent to which Julie is recreating her memory of the period with Anthony becomes apparent by the exact replication of her London flat (also a replica of Hogg's 1980s flat).  

Another layer emerges: Anthony's voice reiterates discussions that took place in that same flat, and the reconstruction of the flat brings him back to a ghostly life.  The image becomes even more layered with diegetic sounds that we recognise from previous scenes or 'Part I'; a ship's deep horn, the chimes of a Venetian bell tower.  The deep horn sound recurs throughout the film and becomes blurred with the pained grunts heard in Anthony's heroin come-down or Anna Calvi's throbbing lamentation in her song Julie.  The Venetian bells merge with the reverberation of Julie's flourishing creativity.  These sounds echo through the film as though they're heard within the sparse confines of a sound stage, a city, or within the artist's mind; bouncing off layers of creative thought and ideas.  It's never clear what space we're in or looking at, or whether it's a real or imagined space.  

This amalgamation of layered images, sounds and filmic references enthralled me, perhaps because it closely resembles what the inside of my own head looks like: a repository of feelings, images, etc that need an outlet, need to amalgamate.  The scene ends with an image of the reflection of a distant fluorescent square (a recurring image that culminates in the film's glorious final scene) that Julie walks through and out of the image, she's inspired and closer to making her film.  That moment was when I finally breathed out.

Here's another square that contains an image of construction, possibility & creativity.  It's a shell of a construction site that inspired me to film something in it.  Before I could plan anything, the whole site was filled with scaffolding which covered the beautiful colours of the walls and the multi-levelled nature of the floor.  It went from being an open, light-filled space to one that was enclosed and uninviting.

The construction site in question (prior to installation of scaffolding)