The Eternal Daughter feels like a movie that only Joanna Hogg could make. By that, I don’t just mean the autobiographical and casting similarities it shares with The Souvenir films, two outings that catapulted the British filmmaker into the limelight. But rather, the film’s preoccupation with building an evocative narrative that directly taps into atmospheric specificity and astounding emotional intellect.
The Eternal Daughter bears Hogg’s distinct stamp as a rigorous storyteller keen to expand genres from their own trappings, perhaps more than any of her work. It’s a film that feels, sounds, and looks like a standard ghost story. With Hogg at the helm, it also transforms into an act of haunting excavation, situating the turmoil of the time, memory, grief, and familial relationships in a mother-daughter relationship within the aesthetics of a ghost story. In that, The Eternal Daughter is spooky because it isn’t driven merely by the objective of scaring the audience.
It’s for the same reason that Tilda Swinton’s dual turns as Julie, a middle-aged filmmaker (presumably the Julie of The Souvenir; also a stand-in for Hogg herself) and Rosalind, her elderly mother, don’t come across as a gimmick. Hogg and Swinton pull off something of a magic trick really, visually distinguishing two characters and their turns so vividly that the facts that the same actor is playing both roles never overshadow the film’s intimate mysteries.
Hogg rarely frames Julie and Rosalind in the same shot, instead always cutting between them mid-conversation. These shot-reverse-shot exchanges are evidence of the filmmaker’s resourcefulness, taking the film’s commitment to protect its own secrets in rewarding directions.
The film’s creepy setting is another Hogg trademark. As her filmography bears witness, Hogg is adept at establishing a sense of place, remaining particularly invested in observing the things people withhold and reveal about themselves when they occupy a certain place. The ramshackle, secluded hotel with spotty reception, shadowy halls, and sinister stairwells for instance, acts as a window to unspoken regret between mother and daughter in The Eternal Daughter.
As the film progresses, we learn that the hotel once used to be the family home of the mother and every room is naturally imbued with tragedies of a life lived. Rosalind’s memories of the estate from decades ago are superimposed on the present timeline, where we see Julie asking her mother questions in order to fast-track the process of writing a film about her.
The tension in the air elevates the film’s character study: although mother and daughter are the hotel’s only guests, Julie is often disturbed by loud banging noises in the night and an eerie feeling that there might be an intruder. Ed Rutherford’s glorious 16mm cinematography douses the grounds in gloomy suspense, which is aptly complemented by the film’s ominous soundscape.
By letting the audience contextualize the vacation in their heads while transporting them into a supernatural setting, Hogg strengthens the emotional devastations that the film manages to reach. Tapping into her unhurried, unassuming sensibilities as a filmmaker, Hogg delivers a moving tribute to the truths that pull mothers and daughters toward each other — and away from one another.
Working with an equally accomplished collaborator who manages to stray away from a showy performance, Hogg succeeds in seeing Julie and Rosalind as two sides of a coin, marked with eagerness as well as exhaustion. Indeed, The Eternal Daughter proves to be a much gentler and tender exploration of the human condition that cements Hogg and Swinton as miraculous artists in their own right.
Ratings: 2 out of 5 stars
(This story originally appeared in Cinema Express)