Self, Invention: Honor Swinton Byrne and Joanna Hogg on ‘The Souvenir Part II’

For the role of Julie, Hogg cast Honor Swinton Byrne, Swinton’s daughter, in her first major acting job, mere weeks before the first film began production. With no formal acting training, the then-19-year-old marinated in Hogg’s film references, as well as in artworks (Fragonard’s The Souvenir, of course, the films’ namesake), books, photographs, even Hogg’s diaries and therapist’s notes. Not to mention the film’s soundtrack—everything from Erasure, Mick Ronson, and the Eurythmics to Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle—which Hogg says has a “madeleine-like quality of transporting one back to a particular moment in time.”

Swinton Byrne, now 24, didn’t find the period setting much of a stretch. “I feel like I grew up in the ’80s,” she says, speaking from Edinburgh. “I grew up listening to that music, watching those films, hearing about the period from my mum, and feeling quite connected to that time. I loved living in that time [on set], with the music and clothes.”

Her wardrobe included pieces from that period, surfaced from the director’s closet as well as her mother’s, and they tell a story of their own across the two parts. “In the first film, when Julie’s with Anthony, I wore a lot of corsets, a lot of cardigans, very restrictive things that sucked me in. Then with the second film, it was really chic, very relaxed, comfortable, elegant, a bit more masculine and edgy,” Swinton Byrne explains. Some silhouettes—a long, dramatic coat in particular—call back to Anthony’s costume from the first film. “I really did feel it made me want to dress cooler as Honor.”