This Souvenir is forgettable.
Julie is a film student. She comes from wealth and privilege, and is interested in making movies about people outside of her bubble. She is naive, but she knows it.
Anthony comes along. He seems to know a lot more about the world than Julie does—and she loves it. But as Julie zooms in on Anthony, she loses focus on the rest of her life.
Unfortunately, The Souvenir is exactly the kind of artsy and disconnected movie that Julie is afraid of making. It’s slow, sad, and frustrating. Early scenes build up Julie as an intelligent woman aware of her own limits, but time and again she makes decisions that can only be explained by extreme naivete. The movie simply doesn’t ring true.