Metacritic reviews

The Souvenir is an artefact in the highest auteur register. Its absence of tonal readability is a challenge. But there is also a cerebrally fierce, slow-burn passion in its austere, unemphasised plainness.

This is an illuminating (self-)portrait of a young artist as well as a mesmerizing chronicle of a consuming, destructive relationship that steadily inches its way under the viewer's skin.

It may have taken Hogg several decades to realize that her own box of darkness was actually a beautiful gift, but she unwraps it with the care and tenderness of someone who understands its true value.

If The Souvenir seems to move assuredly to its own unconventional rhythms, it’s because Hogg isn’t telling a straightforward story; she’s showing us, piecemeal, how an artist’s sensibility comes into being.

Survived pain arises as both a vehicle for growth and catalyst for the revaluation of one’s impetus in Joanna Hogg’s introspectively awe-inspiring stroke of virtuosity The Souvenir.

This portrait of the artist as a young film-maker will certainly stand the test of time.

Achingly well-observed in its study of a young artist inspired, derailed and finally strengthened by a toxic relationship, it is at once the coming-of-age story of many women and a specific creative manifesto for one of modern British cinema’s most singular writer-directors.

The result is the best kind of fine art: heartbreaking, sophisticated and deeply cinematic all at once.

Hogg’s earlier films are striking in their picturesque abstractness as we sit in on conversations from a distance, but the ambition and warmth on display in The Souvenir makes this her greatest achievement.

As heartbreaking as it is acutely observed, Hogg’s deep-diving autobiographical film is a beautiful, confessional tell-all about the brief joys and enduring tragedy that helped her find her voice as an artist.