Review: The Eternal Daughter

Director:  Joanna Hogg

Stars:  Tilda Swinton, Carly-Sophia Davies, Joseph Mydell

An intentionally mysterious post-script to her diptych The Souvenir, Joanna Hogg returns with perhaps her most playful film to date. Inspired to dabble in the trappings of genre, The Eternal Daughter quite exquisitely resurrects the spirit of M. R. James and the BBC’s ’70s Christmas Ghost Stories. This being Hogg, the ornaments of the ghost story are used to add sparkle to yet another acutely observed drama of British middle class mannerisms, here centred around a mesmeric dual performance from Tilda Swinton.

Swinton both reprises her role as silver haired matriarch Rosalind and takes the reigns from her own daughter Honor Swinton Byrne as Julie Hart grown older. The two women travel through an evocatively misty night by taxi to a secluded country hotel in North Wales to celebrate Rosalind’s birthday. Julie has chosen the spot due to her mother’s oft-spoken affection for the place. It is an appreciably old, chilly and vaguely gothic building with significant grounds. Gardens that abut a graveyard. Such buildings have a life of their own. Creaks, groans and clanks.

Julie is vexed to discover on arrival that the specific room she had requested is unavailable, in spite of it appearing as though they are the hotel’s only guests. The indifference of the young receptionist (Carly-Sophia Davies) adds a through line of comedic tension to what follows. It is in these interactions especially that Hogg’s film converses with the humdrum bureaucratic comedies of Peter Strickland; a likeminded enjoyment of British passive aggression and pettiness.

Hogg employs similar repetitions to Strickland as the days of relaxation for Julie and Rosalind start bleeding into one another. The two women never leave the grounds, in part due to Rosalind’s ill-health and Julie’s panicked doting. It is revealed that they lost her father William in recent years, and the pain of departing parents is written all over Julie’s knitted brow. Yet her fawning creates another kind of tension between the two women. Through this, Hogg teases out a modest but wise depiction of an adult mother/daughter dynamic. 

Julie – an avatar for Hogg – has indeed become a filmmaker, and as The Eternal Daughter unfolds it becomes clear that she is prepping a new project based on her mother. She coyly records their conversations; an underhand element that darkens the power balance between them. Here Hogg self-criticises, and much of the film reads as an essay in an author’s responsibility, especially when the subject is held so dear.

The Eternal Daughter‘s BBFC certificate boldly warns of “moderate horror”, which is something of an oversell. Still, lightly implying the presence of spectres on site, Hogg destabilises reality and creates something pregnant with magic. When the receptionist leaves for the night, the building seems to murmur into life, unguarded. With its still corridors and mezzanine places, the hotel comes to evoke a similar dreamy feeling to the cinema in Tsai Ming-liang’s gorgeous Goodbye, Dragon Inn. Hogg’s unhurried pacing furthers this connection. That we create buildings alive with memories is spoken within the text of the film, but Hogg also conjures this feeling beautifully, and her mist roils spectacularly.

If the end of The Souvenir Part II found Hogg at her boldest, some of that spirit carries over. Dancing with ghost story elements, she is emboldened to employ split diopters, Dutch angles, even a few heavenly zooms – all redolent of the ’70s ghost stories her film is indebted to. And yet The Eternal Daughter is never anything but hers, given voice by these two superbly calibrated performances from Swinton. Any sense of gimmick to the dual casting vanishes quickly in favour of luxuriating in the delicately edited interplay. One might argue this is an inessential coda, but that very feeling also makes it such a treat.

It feels like it has taken the BFI an eternity to put this into cinemas (it debuted at Venice in September 2022), but the decision to hold onto it until the encroachment of winter is absolutely right. This is a picture in sync with the coming of the cold when the days are at their shortest. The story is positioned at this time of the year (Julie helps Rosalind complete Christmas cards), and it carries the promise of something ineffably supernatural about the months ahead. For this viewer at the very least, the wait was worth it.