Joan­na Hogg and Hon­or Swin­ton Byrne on the art of vulnerability

To say that The Sou­venir is a per­son­al project for British film­mak­er Joan­na Hogg requires a finessed under­stand­ing of what this cliché́d descrip­tion means. A hoard­er of let­ters, diaries, pho­tographs and mis­cel­la­neous cre­ative memen­tos, Hogg has both returned to a spe­cif­ic peri­od in her life – Lon­don in the 1980s when she was a film stu­dent and in a tumul­tuous rela­tion­ship with a trou­bled man – and also recre­at­ed it. Pro­duc­tion design­er Stéphane Col­longe pro­ject­ed old pho­tographs tak­en by Hogg as exte­ri­ors to the win­dows of the cen­tral apart­ment, itself an inch-by-inch recon­struc­tion of her old Knights­bridge flat, albeit based, like most of the set, with­in a for­mer RAF hangar in Norfolk.

Cast­ing her­self, as it were, was a long process. While she quick­ly set­tled on Tom Burke to play the lover, Antho­ny, it was only after an ardu­ous search that Julie went to then 19-year-old first-timer Hon­or Swin­ton Byrne, daugh­ter of Hogg’s friend-of-many years, Til­da Swin­ton, who acts as Julie’s moth­er. It’s say­ing some­thing that the result­ing films tran­scends all of these meta lay­ers, stand­ing as a painful­ly raw and struc­tural­ly rig­or­ous account of a sen­si­tive young woman try­ing to move for­wards cre­ative­ly and romantically.

LWLies was grant­ed an audi­ence with Hogg and Swin­ton Byrne and noticed with­in one sec­ond (the pair embraced pas­sion­ate­ly on the moment of reunion, then rushed off to see the hair stylist’s small dog) that theirs is a rela­tion­ship more akin to fam­i­ly than pro­fes­sion­al co-work­ers. We start­ed by div­ing straight into the deep end, cut­ting to the quick of this rich, ele­giac film and ask­ing about the mechan­ics of the cen­tral roman­tic relationship.

LWLies: Is there a way to avoid desta­bil­is­ing rela­tion­ships or do you have to go through them in order to grow wise to them?

Hon­or Swin­ton Byrne: I think you have to go through them. It’s ​‘what­ev­er doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ it makes you get to know your­self bet­ter. But I’m talk­ing not from real expe­ri­ence. [To Joan­na] What do you feel?

Joan­na Hogg: Some­times you don’t have any choice, because when you’re in the rela­tion­ship you can’t see your­self out­side it. You’re tak­en with it until there’s a moment where you think, ​‘Maybe this isn’t right,’ or, ​‘Maybe I have to get out of this’.

I’m sur­prised to hear that the rela­tion­ship wis­dom doesn’t come from per­son­al expe­ri­ence, Hon­or, because you appear so vul­ner­a­ble. Where did that per­for­mance come from?

HSB: That was my first of any kind of act­ing expe­ri­ence in front of the cam­era so I guess the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty came from it all being so new to me. I was giv­en so much lee­way and so much free­dom to try and find my own ver­sion of the character.

JH: Hon­or didn’t see a script so she didn’t see how the sto­ry was going to unfold. You, Hon­or, are vul­ner­a­ble in the sit­u­a­tion because you’re giv­ing your­self to the process and some­times you’re sur­prised by what’s going on – liv­ing the sto­ry. Yet you were guid­ed by mate­ri­als. You saw some of what I was think­ing at that point in time. You saw some diaries of mine didn’t you?

You kept stuff from the ​’80s?

JH: As much as I could not know­ing why or when it might be use­ful. I don’t like throw­ing things away.

HSM: See­ing those made me feel as though I should keep things and write things down and take pic­tures and make films and doc­u­ment things and keep them safe. You nev­er know when you will want to look back and rem­i­nisce and cre­ate some­thing new.

That’s a huge deal, show­ing some­one your diary. Was it hard to hand it over?

JH: Not with Hon­or. I already knew Hon­or so there was nev­er any ques­tion about that. Maybe I thought about that more when I was show­ing Tom because I didn’t know Tom when I first met him. Even so, some­how the film – the sto­ry – takes prece­dence. What’s impor­tant is what mate­ri­als are nec­es­sary to tell this sto­ry and make this film. It sounds very cold, doesn’t it? There is a sort of objec­ti­fi­ca­tion. I think it’s nec­es­sary to do that.

I would say it’s the oppo­site of cold because you’re putting all that heat into the film on which oth­er peo­ple can warm themselves.

JH: But I would some­times feel guilty when we were film­ing and my objects would appear in front of the cam­era. [To Hon­or] Some­times your objects, because Hon­or bought some of her per­son­al things to the film.

HSB: Toys, all my child­hood stuff was on the bed. The lion was mine, the croc­o­dile was yours and it was mix­ing stuff from the ​’80s with stuff from the late ​’90s.

JH: The bed cov­er you bought.

HSB: When I was lying under­neath it I felt like I was in bed at home. I felt very safe.

JH: And then the bed was mine. It was a real mix-up of you and me and past and present.

HSB: Which was magical.

It sounds like quite a trip for you, Joan­na. What was it like to vivid­ly go back to such a spe­cif­ic time in your life?

JH: Some of it was excit­ing and felt cre­ative because I was redis­cov­er­ing ideas and thoughts I had and scripts and films I want­ed to make from that time. Occa­sion­al­ly I would come up against an image I didn’t like so much that made me think, ​‘Oh, did I real­ly do that?’ or ​‘Was I like that?’ and brought back the ques­tion­ing that I did a lot of at that time of who I was and what I was and where I fit­ted into the world. That was exhaust­ing at the time and I caught a bit of that again look­ing back at it.

Did it place a bur­den of respon­si­bil­i­ty on you, Hon­or, to know that you’re play­ing a ver­sion of Joanna?

HSB: Not at all! Oh my lord, the oppo­site! It’s an absolute hon­our to rep­re­sent an alter-ego – rep­re­sent a tiny part of Joan­na or Julie. The whole film­mak­ing process helped me to feel more spon­ta­neous in life. I love rou­tine, rhythm, know­ing what’s going on and know­ing the plan, a lit­tle bit like a con­trol freak. Shoot­ing the first Sou­venir, I real­ly allowed myself to be com­plete­ly in Joanna’s hands. It felt so good to impro­vise and to not have a plan. It was such an adven­ture and it helped me to feel slight­ly more con­fi­dent and slight­ly more com­fort­able, even in my per­son­al life. Feel­ing more trust­ing, hav­ing faith that everything’s going to be fine and know­ing that you’re held by your loved ones so you can let go and be com­plete­ly relaxed.

It sounds… life-changing?

HSB: It was so, so life-chang­ing in the most pos­i­tive, pos­i­tive way. The last day of shoot­ing was my 20^th birth­day. We were in Venice, then I had three months and then I went to Namib­ia in south­ern Africa. I vol­un­teered as a pri­ma­ry school teacher for eight months. Going there by myself, not hav­ing any idea of what it would be like, I used those impro­vi­sa­tion skills, and hav­ing a sit­u­a­tion come to you that’s com­plete­ly unex­pect­ed and going, ​‘Do you know what? I’m going to face it and I’m going to do my best. I’m going to com­plete­ly push for­ward and I’m not scared’.

Before The Sou­venir, act­ing wasn’t your focus. Has doing this made you want to con­tin­ue down this track, or are you going to do some­thing dif­fer­ent with your new confidence?

HSB: I’ve applied to study psy­chol­o­gy at Uni­ver­si­ty in Edin­burgh and I’m mov­ing there in August whether or not I get in. I’ll dis­cov­er in August whether I’ve got in or not, but I want to live there for a year.

JH: Oh!

HSB: This is very, very new. I applied to study psy­chol­o­gy after I’d done The Sou­venir. The com­bi­na­tion of The Sou­venir and Africa – but par­tic­u­lar­ly The Sou­venir – watered the flower of my inter­est in psy­chol­o­gy. Get­ting into the soul of Julie and inter­act­ing with Antho­ny – who he was and who he is and the new ver­sion of him and the old ver­sion – was so interesting.

Was the old ver­sion of Antho­ny also called Anthony?

JH: He wasn’t actually.

HSB: I nev­er knew the char­ac­ter that Antho­ny was based on. I only know Tom’s.

As I under­stand it, you Hon­or were impro­vis­ing day-by-day but there was a script that oth­er actors were refer­ring to.

HSB: It wasn’t a script.

JH: It’s like a novel­la or some­thing. An illus­trat­ed novel­la. Did you ever phys­i­cal­ly see it?

HSB: Nev­er. I just hear the legends.

JH: I cast Tom quite a few months before the shoot so he was privy to the doc­u­ment. Antho­ny is, in a way, an actor – you don’t know if he’s per­form­ing or not. I some­times cast non-actors but it felt right that Antho­ny was played by an actor – a man who’s in con­trol and sort of directs life. So it was com­plete­ly right that Tom saw the map of where we were going. For Julie it felt like a dif­fer­ent jour­ney. It was some­thing we agreed. I didn’t just impose that on Hon­or. I said, ​‘How would you feel if you don’t see any­thing and take it step by step?’ I think that was…

HSB: …the best deci­sion because I was actu­al­ly expe­ri­enc­ing being a lit­tle bit lost and try­ing to find my way in some­thing with some­body who was a lit­tle bit more in con­trol than I was. Tom being in the know was per­fect for Antho­ny, who was also slight­ly in the know.

JH: And even design­ing what was com­ing up.

There’s no moral sign­post­ing at moments of rev­e­la­tion. You leave it to the audi­ence to decide what to think of this rela­tion­ship, this man, all of it. How impor­tant was strik­ing this non-judge­men­tal tone?

JH: I tend not to like to judge things. I was explor­ing who this per­son was in the film with­out know­ing the answers myself. Maybe it comes out of me sim­ply not know­ing and actu­al­ly it’s a voy­age of dis­cov­ery. In part two, with­out spoil­ing too much of that, there’s a con­tin­u­al dis­cov­ery even after Anthony’s gone.

That says some­thing about your inner poise that you can show a char­ac­ter mak­ing their lover suf­fer and still be curi­ous about them. There doesn’t seem to be a tip­ping point, behav­ioural­ly, where you want to car­i­ca­ture him.

JH: You’re judg­ing him more than I am. That’s what hap­pens. You make a film and then I’m – with the oth­er films too – some­times sur­prised or even shocked by the judge­ments that are made. Human nature is so com­plex and I always try with the char­ac­ters to show dif­fer­ent sides of peo­ple, and there are good sides and bad sides. It’s not even good and bad. It’s just so com­plex. So when some­one judges a char­ac­ter and focus­es on what I see as one facet of them I’m sort of shocked by that.

Well, I’m almost def­i­nite­ly pro­ject­ing my val­ues, there­fore it’s inter­est­ing to learn what was in the DNA of the film and what wasn’t.

JH: Maybe it sounds bet­ter if I say, ​‘Yes it’s total­ly part of my plan and moral code,’ but it was a jour­ney of dis­cov­ery back into who I was through Honor’s Julie and who Antho­ny might have been. There are still no answers. I didn’t want there to be any answers.

So it’s the mys­tery of human nature. Do you think that some­times peo­ple stay in painful dynam­ics because there is inti­ma­cy to be found in shared pain?

JH: The pain is maybe felt more by you, or the view­er. From my mem­o­ry of being in a rela­tion­ship like that, I’m not sure how much pain I felt. I don’t know whether that’s a ques­tion of the time pass­ing and it’s so far away that I’ve for­got­ten the pain. There was cer­tain­ly anx­i­ety and wor­ry, but I don’t know if I would go so far as to say pain. There was a com­fort in this push-me/pull-you rela­tion­ship, where it’s its own drug and the drug of that rela­tion­ship. The dance you make with that per­son is kind of pain­less. It doesn’t mean that you don’t suf­fer lat­er on but dur­ing the dance you’re numb.

What do you asso­ciate with that time, with old Anthony?

JH: It was a total immer­sion into a par­tic­u­lar way of life. Antho­ny shows Julie a way of being and Julie becomes a pro­tag­o­nist of their own film, which is very seduc­tive. There’s a lot of seduc­tive­ness, there’s a lot of plea­sure. He does seduce her. He’s a king of plea­sure. They’re float­ing just a few inch­es off the ground. Pain is when you’re on the ground and you’re fight­ing and it’s all com­ing out.

HSB: Pain sug­gests that you want it to end. When you feel pain you want it to end –well I do any­way – as soon as pos­si­ble and not come back. That’s not what I felt as Julie. I didn’t want Antho­ny to go away and nev­er come back. Yes, this thing you said about being a pro­tag­o­nist in their own film. They real­ly, real­ly love each oth­er. That I feel is over­looked some­times. It’s such a love sto­ry. I know it’s very dis­tress­ing but they’re such an inter­est­ing pair. Adding to the meta lay­ers, your actu­al mum, Til­da Swin­ton, plays your on-screen mum. Did it make the shoot feel more like home?

HB: I felt at home any­way because I was with Joan­na, but of course, because she’s my real mum it felt so nat­ur­al to me, and to her as well. Our rela­tion­ship is so dif­fer­ent to the rela­tion­ship of Julie and her moth­er. It was dif­fi­cult not to hug her all the time because that’s what I do. It’s very inter­est­ing to explore a dif­fer­ent rela­tion­ship with her, although I love my rela­tion­ship with her. I wouldn’t change it.

Joan­na, what sort of films were you watch­ing at that time in the ear­ly ​’80s? Who were you dis­cov­er­ing and who was influ­enc­ing the way you were thinking?

JH: It was quite eclec­tic. Radio On by Chris Petit set on motor­ways, shot on beau­ti­ful black and white film by Mar­tin Schafer to the music of Kraftwerk and David Bowie. The Super 8 films of Derek Jar­man. I real­ly liked Ulrike Ottinger, the film Tick­et of No Return was inspi­ra­tional, but also Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz. It went from grit­ty real­ism to musicals.

At what stage did you realise that you want­ed to name your films after the Jean-Hon­oré Frag­o­nard paint­ing, ​‘The Souvenir’?

JH: The paint­ing was always in the sto­ry, and in the orig­i­nal expe­ri­ence. I hon­est­ly can’t remem­ber. I’ve got notes from 1988 about mak­ing a two-part film and the first part was going to be based on the expe­ri­ence of this rela­tion­ship. I only dis­cov­ered that when we were doing all the diary search­es before we made part one. It def­i­nite­ly wasn’t called The Sou­venir then. It prob­a­bly came up near the begin­ning of when I sat down to work on that sto­ry again. It sud­den­ly seemed very obvi­ous. It had to be that because the film is a sou­venir itself. It has a lot of dif­fer­ent mean­ings. I am nor­mal­ly ter­ri­ble at com­ing up with titles. With all the oth­er films I’ve come up with a title after pro­duc­tion was com­plet­ed and there’s
been a bit of pressure.

HSB: Which is the right way round because it’s the title of your project and you only real­ly know that project once you’ve made it. It’s almost like nam­ing a baby after it’s born, do you know what I mean? Once you meet it you can look at it and go, ​‘Oh my gosh, it’s a Rosie,’ or, ​’It’s a Paul,’ because it’s your creation.

What was it about Joanna’s baby that made you want to be in it?

HSB: Joan­na could come to me with absolute­ly any­thing and I’d say yes. Gen­uine­ly. It sound­ed like such an unbe­liev­ably impor­tant sto­ry to tell and I was so touched that she asked me to be a part of it. I just had to do it. I want­ed to explore it, I live inside Julie for a lit­tle bit and I real­ly want­ed to learn more about this rela­tion­ship and expe­ri­ence new self-dis­cov­er­ies. It sound­ed like such an adven­ture and it excit­ed me hear­ing about this. It stim­u­lat­ed me. I want­ed more of it. [To Joan­na] Any­thing to do with you I love.

There’s a lot of love here!

HSB: So much love…

The Sou­venir is released 30 August. Read more in LWLies 80.