Rating: 3.5/5
Tilda Swinton plays a woman, Julie, and her mother, Rosalind, as they stay in an old family house converted into a hotel. With Julie’s father’s passing, she hopes to spend time with her mother and gather memories for a film about their relationship
Rosalind is nostalgic, remembering occurrences from the house and holding onto old cards and keepsakes. But alongside those happy memories are also dark moments from her life
Julie remains unsettled from the moment she arrives, with the concierge being rude and dismissive and the building full of creaks and bumps that keep her up all night. With each dark memory she draws from her mother, their relationship grows tense
Julie and Rosalind are also the names of Honor Swinton Byrne and Tilda Swinton’s characters in The Souvenir, so you can view this as The Souvenir III, although the story is much later in Julie’s life
While I appreciate the mystery tone of the movie, I never felt a sense of escalation with it — the mystery exists, and then all comes to light. Not that it needed to be different, but I do think it left me less engaged with the story