In The Souvenir, Joanna Hogg demonstrates Julie’s development from a shy observer to the main character in her own story through the way Julie occupies the room and the frame. This essay is a sneak preview of the new ebook on the film, Tour of Memories: The Creative Process Behind Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir. Get your copy of the book here.
“I have not got that much room,” Julie (Honor Swinton-Byrne) laughingly protests in an early scene in The Souvenir. Anthony (Tom Burke) is sharing her bed for the first time, and he teases her about taking up too much space on the mattress. “You’ve got a foot on that side, and I’m literally on a ledge. I’ve got nowhere left to go,” he counters. It is one of the sweeter moments in The Souvenir and a key point where the couple’s intimacy begins to flourish.
This scene hints at the importance of Julie’s screen space in The Souvenir, whether it is the balance of the space shared between Julie and Anthony as a couple, or the amount of space Julie takes up in the frame in all the other corners of her life: in her apartment, at film school, on her trip to Venice. Joanna Hogg demonstrates Julie’s development from a shy observer to the main character in her own story through the way Julie occupies the room and the frame.
At the beginning of the film, Julie plays a role that she is comfortable in: that of a filmmaker, constantly observing from the side of a room rather than being the centre of the conversation — or the frame. We’re introduced to Julie at a house party in her apartment. The room is filled with cigarette smoke and artistic types chatting about their latest projects — but Julie is not talking to anyone. She is not bored or unhappy; she smiles contentedly as she grips her camera, taking pictures of anyone who catches her eye.
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When Julie takes Anthony back home to visit her family, we discover she comes from a posh, civil family entrenched in the repressive social mores of the British upper classes, especially where gender roles are concerned. Over dinner, we observe a respectful debate between the family, mainly between Anthony and Julie’s father; Julie’s mother, Rosalind (Tilda Swinton), interjects politely but without force, the product of a lifetime being told that her opinion is not as valuable as the men around her. Julie is almost completely silent at the table; we infer she was taught to be seen and not heard. But she discovered filmmaking as an outlet to express herself without words.
Julie thinks that to be a filmmaker, she needs to make herself invisible, because she does not see her own story as interesting or worthy. In one shot of that first house party sequence, she takes a photo while pushing herself up as far against the wall (and the frame) as possible, as if to take up as little space as she can. She wants to remove herself from her art; the project that she is working on at the start of the film is about a young working class boy in Sunderland, an experience far from her own posh upbringing. “I want to not live my life in this very privileged part of the world I come from,” she explains. “I don’t want to be in that bubble my entire life.”
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Julie sees filmmaking as an escape from herself, and a means of deflecting attention. She finds it hard to describe the film she wants to make, stumbling over her words and reverting to the meaningless adjective “interesting” every time she has to pitch it to someone. But when she is hiding behind her camera, far from the centre of attention, she is in her comfort zone. She does not believe she is engaging enough to warrant her own story being told — until she meets Anthony.
Anthony is one of the people Julie meets and photographs at that house party; their relationship begins with him as the subject and her as the observer. When they later go on their first date, Hogg shoots most of their discussion in a wide with Julie, once again, pushed right up against the side of the frame, while Anthony has more space. This choice reflects the space that Anthony will go on to consume in their relationship. Anthony is a larger presence in the frame than Julie: with his back to us, he is mysterious and looming, an enigmatic figure. Because she sees him as a grand and intriguing character, the scene is framed as if it is his story directed by Julie rather than her own story.
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As Julie becomes further embroiled in her relationship with Anthony, she starts to take up more space in the frame and in her own narrative. Gradually, the story of her own life overtakes any other story she might want to tell, and she talks less about her plans to make a film in Sunderland. Julie turns from the observer to the subject. Anthony listens to her, challenges her, and takes her seriously in a way that nobody else has before. He overtakes her life in an unhealthy way, but he also gives her confidence. In one of the first scenes in which Julie is centred in the frame, Anthony tells her she is special just as he asks to stay at her flat for a few days. (He basically moves in, literally occupying more space in her life.) She dismisses his compliment with an air of defiance, holding her chin up and folding her arms decisively. It is as if, while she might not fully believe what he is saying, she wants to be convinced — she challenges him to convince her. It is one of the first scenes where she has power and agency: she occupies the centre of the frame, although she is still not looking directly into the lens, not yet ready to take up that kind of power.
As Julie and Anthony become closer as a couple, they begin to share the screen more equally — but she still struggles to be an independent person. She is unable to fill the empty space Anthony leaves when he is not there. In one scene, they host a dinner party for two of Anthony’s friends, one of whom is a filmmaker; Anthony has thoughtfully invited him to get Julie the inside scoop on film school. Julie and Anthony are shot side by side, as equals. But when Anthony leaves the table for a moment, the camera does not adjust to recenter Julie; instead, she is left at the side of the frame and the gap that Anthony left behind endures. In that space, we see Anthony’s friends reflected in the mirror — a sign that his life and his social world threaten to overpower hers. Julie may have come to realise some of her self-worth, but she is not yet confident being her own person independent from Anthony. They are still mostly framed together, rather than in single shots, and Anthony is often the dominant figure in the frame.
What is more, he takes away Julie’s agency over the narrative of her own life by continually dropping bombs on her in her own home, destabilizing what is supposed to be a safe space. He is a heroin addict; he gives her an STD; he steals her stuff. Julie happens upon these facts by surprise when they start disrupting her life; Anthony does not tell her anything himself. These upheavals continually complicate and divert her life from the narrative of professional and romantic success that she wants to follow.
Anthony gives Julie some confidence and agency, but he also actively stunts her development, ensuring their relationship remains co-dependent. While he does seem to care for Julie, he also keeps her in his life for practical and selfish reasons: he is a heroin addict who wants to maintain a facade of wealth despite struggling financially. So he forces himself into Julie’s life and her home, moving in quickly and borrowing money from her regularly. He takes so much from her that he has to manipulate her into thinking that she needs him, too. During an argument about Anthony’s stealing, the couple sit on opposite sides of the room and frame, until he guilts her into forgiving him. Anthony grabs Julie’s foot and pulls her towards him, dragging her back into his space and their toxic closeness.
On the rare occasion that Julie is shot independently, away from Anthony, she is often in film school, an environment that offers her a greater chance of independence. During a film school admissions interview, Julie sits alone opposite a panel of judges, who listen silently as she stumblingly pitches her film. The set-up is intimidating, like an interrogation, and it forces Julie to the center of the frame. Now she is the subject, and the judges observe her. Her nervous stuttering indicates she is not yet completely comfortable with this role. One of her interviewers notes, “You’re trying to make a film about an experience that’s very different from yours. You could argue that it would be better for you to work from your own experience, particularly at an early stage.” In the moment, Julie rejects this idea, but her time at film school opens her up to the possibility of involving herself in her art.
In film class, Julie is able to take control in a way we have never seen her do before. She speaks her mind and commands the attention of her peers, who are mostly male. It is possible that the confidence she feels is a direct result of her relationship with Anthony: when she speaks, he listens. She effuses eloquently about the brilliance of the shower scene in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) while the rest of her class listens intently. In this scene, she is offset to the right while most of the class stands together on the left; just like in the interview, she is the subject and her peers are her observer. This time, however, she commands the crowd, gesticulating confidently and speaking without hesitation. However, she often does not have confidence in her own convictions, allowing her peers to talk down to her during a shoot where she is the director. She defers to her camera operator about how many takes she should do because she does not yet trust herself as a leader.
Julie’s relationship with Anthony is a double-edged sword: he gives her confidence but takes away her agency; he encourages her to follow her dreams then consumes her with their toxic relationship. Anthony encourages her to apply to film school and helps her prepare for her interview, although Julie is not completely comfortable at first. But it is also Anthony who takes her away from film school: he sucks up so much of Julie’s time and energy that, in the latter third of the film, one of her peers notes he hardly sees her in class. The typewriter that we first see Julie using to write a script is later used, instead, to type up a Venice packing checklist for Julie’s trip with Anthony, and the desk Julie once used to write and edit her film becomes a place where she reads Venice guidebooks. Anthony takes up so much space in her life that he jeopardizes her passions.
Julie does not truly become the protagonist in her own story until her trip to Venice with Anthony. It is a pivotal sequence because Julie is in an unfamiliar place, with no set rules or rituals for the couple. But in Venice, she must confront who she is without any of the markers of her past. In two separate shots of the streets of Venice and the stairs of the opera, she wears a glamorous couture evening gown. The moonlight bounces off the dress in a glamorous way, and Julie is the prime focus of the frame, in the centre and taking up a lot of space.
As Hogg describes in her interview, Julie is “becoming a protagonist in her own film,” occupying the centre of the frame, but that film remains “directed by Anthony.” She remains trapped under Anthony’s gaze. There is a certain thrill to being a movie star, in the way that Julie is presented in the Venice sequence, but it also does not quite feel like Julie, whose usual outfits of jeans are a far cry from her extravagant Venice wardrobe. She is miserable in Venice — she cries in the hotel room the moment they arrive — partly.
The sex scene that ends the Venice section adopts Anthony’s point-of-view. His gaze leers at and lingers on Julie’s body in a creepy way. Up until now, she has been mostly shown as a whole figure, but here, his gaze cuts her up into bits and dehumanises her. Her body parts are presented in fragmented shots. The curves of Julie’s figure are accentuated by the fancy lingerie that Anthony bought her earlier and the bold lighting of the scene which creates dramatic shadows; her body is presented in an idealised and unrealistic way.
The sex scene cuts straight to Julie confronting Anthony about his theft of her belongings. Not long after, Julie breaks up with him, and we finally see each of them in separate closeups, completely disconnected from each other. First, they stare at each other with tear-stained, hurt faces. Then, they part ways: Anthony takes the elevator, and Julie watches the doors close, occluding his face; and then we watch the doors close on Julie, from Anthony’s perspective. It is a clear break; a definitive end to something. That sharp metal line cuts them out of each others’ lives.
While Anthony helped Julie get to a point where she could stand up for herself and act on her desires, it is finally being away from him that allows her to flourish and become her own person with agency. Although Julie later takes Anthony back, she has had time to grow as a person independently and is now able to approach the relationship on her terms. When they reunite over dinner, they are completely equal in the frame. This time, she has as much agency as he, and therefore, their relationship blossoms; when they have dinner together, it is Julie who invades Anthony’s space, resting her foot on his. During one of their happiest moments together, a brief and casual scene of them sitting contentedly together in Julie’s flat, we see each of them in close up singles from the other one’s POV. They’re together again, but this time they’re allowed separate frames from each other. Finally, Julie is able to be happy with Anthony, while still being her own person away from him. She is also now fully the main character of her own story, as she has literally become the camera’s subject.
This newfound confidence and independence from Anthony allows Julie to fully immerse herself in film school without compromising for the sake of her relationship. Before, she stumbled over both film equipment and her words while giving direction. Now, she really feels like part of a team, bouncing ideas off of her classmates, creating work productively, laughing and smiling with them. One scene sees the entire film class travelling in a coach together to their set: they are all framed together as a big group, each given equal weight in the frame because they are truly a team. Julie has lively debates with them; before, the only person who fed her intellect was Anthony. Now that she gets that elsewhere, she no longer needs to cling to Anthony so tightly; by the film’s third act, she is self-assured enough to tell him to go to bed while she stays up to work, instead of inviting him to advise her.
When we first saw Julie take a phone call with Anthony during class, outside the film studio, she was shot in a wide through the studio door, firmly on the outside. The call only ended when she was reprimanded by a peer for ignoring her work to chat with Anthony. The outline of the door was stark, boxing her out of the world of film school. But the last time she takes a call from Anthony on set, the camera is right with her in closeup, and the door into the studio is behind her. This time, it is Julie who tells Anthony she has to go, prioritizing her work over their relationship. She walks back into the studio, returning to her world, high-fiving a classmate on the way. The scene ends on a lingering shot of the closed door from the perspective of the phone. It is the closest we come to adopting Anthony’s perspective in the film, as if he is watching Julie walk away from him. He no longer has the power to stop her.
The penultimate shot of The Souvenir is a statement on where Julie is at the end of the film, finally at center frame: she is now a director, authoring her own story, and confident that it is worth telling. She stands in film class, grieving Anthony’s death and wearing his coat, a sign that she has been irrevocably changed by him and will carry forth the best that he had to give her. The camera slowly pans around the room, starting with Julie at the edge of the frame, in profile, which was long been a shorthand for an audience’s gaze, particularly in depicting women1. She stands in the position of a director, watching her film being made. As the shot develops, Julie moves closer to the lens and takes up more space. Then, she looks directly into the lens, no longer in profile but staring right at us. Not only has she become the camera’s subject — the main character of her own story — but she knows it.
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Read more excerpts from Seventh Row’s book on The Souvenir >>
Read about three of our favourite scenes in The Souvenir and how Hogg approaches framing them >>
- Patricia Simons, “Women in Frames: The Gaze, the Eye, the Profile in Renaissance Portraiture,” History Workshop Journal 25, no. 1 (1988): 7. Women have been depicted in profile for centuries in European paintings and later photography. Simons theorises this convention to be a shorthand for the male gaze: the woman is the object, being gazed upon without knowing it. In contrast, depicting a woman as looking at us can subvert the male gaze as the female subject is taking agency and looking at us rather than the other way around.
