Joanna Hogg has a tremendous skill for representing the self-inflicted emotional agonies of the English upper-middle class that others may find self-indulgent but that I find quietly horrifying. Like in the family scenes in THE SOUVENIR films, Hogg exquisitely captures the details of relationship dynamics within an upper-middle class family who have everything they could want but still manage to be pissy and passive-aggressive about it all. There’s a tension verging into horror in this sense that the English are incapable of happiness and yet cannot acknowledge that or anything but the mildest upsets to the status quo. Hogg captures the horrifying nature of English conservatism: nothing can ever change, nothing will ever change.