At Cannes, Joanna Hogg's 'The Souvenir Part II' stands out

As common as sequels are in summer, they rarely find a place at the Cannes Film Festival

CANNES, France -- Joanna Hogg is sitting on a hotel balcony overlooking the Mediterranean, but what she'd really like to be doing is swimming in it. The night before, Hogg premiered her film “The Souvenir Part II” at the Cannes Film Festival. Sequels may be a regular part of summer, but they rarely make it to Cannes. Yet “The Souvenir” is no usual two-parter. Together, the movies are a sublime, singular work of semi-autobiography — a coming-of-age self-portrait reflected through time and cinema. They're based on a period in Hogg's life in the late '80s when she was in film school in London. In part one, a romance with an older man who has a hidden drug addiction ends tragically. In part two, Julie devotes herself to making her final student film about that experience while processing her grief. In both, Honor Swinton Byrne plays a slightly fictionalized version of Hogg when she was younger; Byrne’s real-life mother, Tilda Swinton, plays her mom.