The Souvenir

iven the evidence of Federico Fellini’s (1963) and François Truffaut’s (1974), time isn’t kind to moviemakers who decide to leap into autobiography: too often, such an endeavour entails rampant solipsism, a romanticization of history, and getting the practice of moviemaking (and cinema itself) entirely wrong. When they too gave in to the impulse to look in the mirror, Chris Marker and Jean-Luc Godard took the craftier route of the auto-essay, a gambit that allows the artist to simultaneously author the work and get out of the way. Here, the voice of the author in direct exchange with the audience replaces the dramatized, unavoidably phony version of the author’s life; a conversation takes the place of an ego