Mark Reviews Movies: THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER

The Eternal Daughter, A24

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 1, 2022

Writer/director Joanna Hogg has made another very personal film with The Eternal Daughter, a fictionalized memoir of sorts that also functions as a ghost story. If not the ghosts of the past, what else are memories, and what else would a ghost be, if not some supernatural form of those memories? The film is haunting, not because it's scary, but because it taps into such ideas in a way that sneaks up on us like some specter hiding in the corner of a room.

There's not much to the story, which sees Tilda Swinton doing double duty as Julie and Rosalind Hart, a daughter and mother who have traveled to the latter's old estate home in the country. The place has been transformed into a hotel, but there's much more to these rooms that a change in furniture cannot hide.

The names of these characters might be familiar to those who know Hogg's previous work. Namely, we're talking about The Souvenir and The Souvenir: Part II, another pair of movies about the filmmaker's personal memories and, in the case of the latter, how one should go about transforming such experiences into art. In those projects, Swinton's own daughter played the part she takes over here, while reprising the role of the mother played there by her daughter and, here, played by herself as an older version of her child/her child's character.

Such casting decisions are more in line with matters of trivia, especially since one doesn't need to have seen those previous movies to understand this self-contained story. Knowing about them does, to some extent, help to comprehend Hogg's intentions and methods a bit earlier and with more ease, to be sure.

Superficially, this is a ghost story, as the cab driver (played by August Joshi) bringing the women to the hotel makes clear. He would visit this estate at times, but on one trip, he noticed the figure of a pale woman standing in the window, staring out toward the garden. He hasn't returned since then, and the driver certainly doesn't stay long when he brings Julie, a filmmaker who's working on the script for her next project, and Rosalind there.

Mostly, though, the tale isn't about literal ghosts, but it does concern some figurative ones. For one thing, Rosalind's husband, Julie's father, has died at some point in the recent past (If one has seen those preceding movies, the presence of Rosalind's dog, which spends most of its time following Julie or lying next to her mother in bed, takes on its own ghostly quality, because we know the kind man was as fond of canines as his wife, although a single photo provides a nice emotional shortcut). The grief of that loss is here, but there's also the pleasant coincidence that Bill (Joseph Mydell), the hotel's compassionate groundskeeper, shares a name with the husband/father. Neither that nor his similar nature of character is lost on either woman.

The only other character of note is the receptionist (played by Carly-Sophia Davies), who's rather impatient and short with her guests, which is either odd or understandable, considering that the mother and daughter seem to be the only visitors with a room at this foggy time of year. During the day, Julie and Rosalind spend time together, talking in the bedroom, chatting before meals, and reminiscing in the various spaces that Rosalind can recall so well from her childhood.

This was once the home of her aunt, a war widow, who took in her nieces and nephews whenever it was required by family or desired by the lonely woman. Julie knows of it because her mother has spoken so warmly and with such cheer about those times of her life. There's another side to those memories, though, which isn't as pleasing, and one of the more significant strengths of Hogg's filmmaking and Swinton's performance is in how naturally and convincingly these conversations between two characters played by one actor are performed, staged, and given life beyond the gimmicky casting decision. Swinton makes each of these women distinct in appearance and manner, but the general sameness of the two characters has a deeper purpose, which one might generally but not specifically predict, that comes into play later.

Meanwhile, Julie wanders the hotel and its grounds at night, with the dog by her side and an escalating sense of fear that someone—or something—could be lurking around every corner, hiding behind every door, or standing in plain sight within that one window looking out at the garden. Hogg doesn't set out to make a horror film, even if those long and dark shots of the hallways, illuminated by the eerie green glow of exit signs, and some claustrophobic spaces certainly look and feel as if they'd fit into one. The purpose of such scenes simply seems to put us in that mindset of uncertainty and dread—not to frighten us in the immediate moment, but to get at some emotional truth about the true nature of this trip and the reality of the central relationship.

As such, the film does somewhat pigeonhole itself into some unfortunate expectations (which do dissipate once the daughter-mother bond takes full focus) and a limited scope, but those seeming shortcomings become part of the larger picture, too. After all, this is Hogg making a movie about a filmmaker struggling to understand her mother and how to tell her mother's story, and if The Eternal Daughter struggles with those things, too, it only makes the result feel all the more achingly authentic.

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