The Souvenir

(United Kingdom, directed by Joanna Hogg)

British director Joanna Hogg’s small but respectable oeuvre exists out of movies dealing with troubled, sensitive,  upper-class Englishmen. ‘The Souvenir’ is about that too, and yet it is her most realized, moving film to date. The story is centered around a young woman (promising newcomer Honor Swinton Byrne) with literary aspirations falling for a heroin addict bourgeois snob. The elliptical way of telling this story works wonderfully; it’s like a series of heartbreaking vignettes. Subtle but no less devastating.