I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING

JEAN-HONORÉ FRAGONARD’S PAINTING THE SOUVENIR, completed in the mid-to-late 1770s, depicts a romantic sentimental scene—pure “rococo,” shimmering with love, light, frivolity. A young woman in a pink dress, tight in the bodice with flowing voluminous skirt, carves an initial into a tree. Beside her a dog perches on a stone pedestal (with Fragonard’s signature etched in the side), and a letter from her lover lies on the ground. A white sky glows around her body. There is no sign of the political upheaval in France at the time. The outer world does not exist. According to the first sale catalog, the girl is supposed to be “Julie,” the lead character in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1761 epistolary novel Julie, or the New Heloise. Fragonard’s painting plays a large role in Joanna Hogg’s new film, The Souvenir, with connections spoken and unspoken, textual and subtextual. Like all effective symbols, Fragonard’s painting gathers in force and scope long after the final credits roll. The Souvenir—painting and film—contains multitudes.

The central character on screen is also named Julie, and she is played by Honor Swinton Byrne (daughter of Tilda Swinton) in one of the most extraordinary breakout performances in recent memory (after previously appearing in ). Julie is in film school in London, struggling to bring a project to fruition. Her idea is a film about a mother and son living in Sunderland, among the wreckage of the shipbuilding industry, sinking out of existence like a doomed Atlantis during the 1980s, when