At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, critics were going Hogg-wild; that is to say, they were beside themselves with adulatory praise for The Souvenir, a heartrending new work of dramatized memoir from less-than-prolific master Joanna Hogg. Here at Little White Lies, we were no exception.

The general public will get their first notion of what all the fuss is about from the newly released trailer, a gentle montage of domestic disharmony captured with striking beauty. (The most beautiful shot being, of course, the pull-quote from the e-pages of this fine publication.)

Honor Swinton Byrne occupies the central role of Julie, a film student from a well-off Knightsbridge family getting her creative bearings during the ’80s. A tumultuous relationship with a magnetic yet untrustworthy fellow named Anthony (Tom Burke) threatens her fledgling career as an artist, however.

This relationship and its deleterious effects cause concern for Julie’s mother, played by none other than Honor Swinton Byrne’s actual mother, who is herself none other than Tilda Swinton.

The film’s success at Sundance has gone through all the rites of an independent festival favorite: a big distribution buy, hopeful if premature awards speculation, news of an impending sequel. Now, all that’s left is for regular people to like it.

The Souvenir comes to theaters in the U.S. on 17 May. 

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