by Robert Bouffard, Editor
Tilda Swinton is one of the best and most diverse actors working today. She can be in a major blockbuster like Doctor Strange, play a homely mother in The Souvenir, or take on multiple roles in a single film, which she’s done multiple times, including in Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria, making each one unique and containing its own depth and complexity. In writer-director Joanna Hogg’s latest film, The Eternal Daughter, Swinton is able to mix all three of these types of films together with her performance.
After Hogg’s previous two Souvenir films followed the character of Julie, played by Swinton’s daughter, Honor Swinton Byrne, Swinton takes up the character’s mantle this time around. But at the same time, she reprises her own role as Julie’s mother, Rosalind, from The Souvenir. This makes The Eternal Daughter not so much a sequel to The Souvenir: Part II, but a film in a different genre, set in the same universe. Julie is still a filmmaker, but here, Hogg’s created the atmosphere of a horror thriller, instead of a grounded, realistic portrayal of a young adult’s struggle to find meaning, passion, and love. This creates a dynamic wherein if you’ve seen the Souvenir films, you could get more out of this one (I certainly did). But if you haven’t, the story, characters, and themes still work.
Those themes and characters are directly related to the filmmaking choices. Swinton isn’t playing both roles as a gimmick; this method is used to illustrate ideas about how we relate to our parents, and vice versa. It makes The Eternal Daughter a nice companion piece to another 2022 A24 release, Aftersun, due to how they each encounter the relationship that a parent and child have. But The Eternal Daughter obviously views presents a much more mature version of this story — Julie is nearing her own twilight years while she witnesses those of her mother. It brings up feelings of regret, memory, and pain as she tries to process these difficult emotions in any way she can.
Hogg sets all of this in front of a horror backdrop, as Julie and Rosalind return to a family home from when Rosalind was young. Only, now it’s been converted into a hotel, and Rosalind recalls memories of her own. Meanwhile, Julie is hearing noises and seeing a figure (a ghost?) in the window, making her trapped in a house of fear and uneasiness. Like a lot of A24 horror movies, there’s metaphor that unfolds throughout the course of the film, which is pretty straightforward, and perhaps a bit too simplistic. Once you realize it, it could be slightly underwhelming, but Hogg’s earnestness is palpable and its more personal nature almost makes the central conceit more endearing.
At the end of the day, Hogg is still in control of the whole filmmaking process here. The two characters Swinton plays rarely occupy the same frame. At first, it feels like this could be for practical reasons, but as the film progresses, there’s a thematic reason for this choice that reveals itself, and it hits hard once it does. This also allows the sound design and Ed Rutherford’s cinematography to play a big role in the creation of the eerie atmosphere.
Even at just 96 minutes, The Eternal Daughter has moments that could benefit from crisper editing. Even still, encountering memory and such an intimate fear is such a relatable concept that Julie’s (potentially) haunted hotel feels fitting for the story that Hogg tells. Swinton’s grounded and human performance holds the film together, and helps you remember that amidst sadness and heartache, hope and the potential for personal progress is always there.
Score: 7/10
The Eternal Daughter is currently available on VOD
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