The thing about this movie is: You actually really feel set back into the Eighties. Not in the way "Stranger Things" do that for you, or "Sex Education", all carefully staged with perfect haircuts and only the right models of bicycles or cars.

Watching "The Souvenir" on the other hand feels different - like watching "Halloween" again (what I actually did last Halloween for the first time in ages), as in: a movie that actually was produced back then. Mainly for the story telling and even more so for the idea that anyone with their clear mind would ever fall in love with a junkie. This of all things is sooooo Eighties.

Also: this guy. I mean: No money, no interesting life, bad style, bad manners, I mean: Come on, really????

And: that girl? First fascinated, then irritated, then completely in love, totally open to finance all those drugs, his embarassing lifestyle, then losing touch with her own career, supported by a unconditionally loving mother.

The movie feels like a flashback - and it is based on the real life of screenwriter and director Joanna Hogg. To all those nights I spent at kitchen tables listening to one of my desperate girlfriends who actually had a thing for those kind of guys. How she would stop seeing him, tomorrow! How she felt soooooo broken hearted!!! How she would never ever find someone as special as him again!!!

Are there still girls out there as stupid as we were fourty years ago??

Or is this a movie for the elderly, again, comforting us with sad memories of stupid life choices.

However: There is a sequel coming out now, I assume there had been some benevolent audience for brilliantly playing Honor Swinton Byrne and Tilda Swinton.