As I stagger on the bus on my way home dripping tears of an unexpected shower, I realise that part of me missed the presence of a unique character such as that brilliantly played by Tom Burke in The Souvenir—the enigmatic Anthony. In retrospect, he (and his perfect costumes, I should add—the pinstripe suit with pink lining, the military-style long coat, the striped pyjamas) is one of the main reasons I fell so madly in love with it. But the rest of me was also enchanted by the overwhelming if metaphysical persistence of Anthony’s charisma, by the disquietingly accurate portraiture of film students and tutors (man, I found myself thinking, we really are all alike—the same conversations, frustrations, desires, insecurities, and the ‘I always wanted to be like Orson Welles’), and even more by how Joanna Hogg tells of the indissoluble tangle of cinematic and personal urges that life for an artist is—especially in the making, when a voice, this bloody irritating word, is fighting to exist and be heard.
