The Eternal Daughter movie review. The white taxi, traveling through the forest road where it is difficult to see the surroundings due to the fog, carries a mother and daughter as passengers. They travel for a while under the weak light of late autumn that disappears early. The bare branches of the dense trees of the forest road seem to drag them into the unknown. What the driver tells us about the place they are going increases our chill quotient.
It was already evening when they arrived at the 300-year-old mansion, which belonged to your mother’s aunt during the Second World War and is now used as a hotel. They are welcomed by the aloof receptionist of the hotel, where no other guests are seen except the mother and daughter. What follows in the story is a period of uneasy experience, where the creaking of the door mixes with the rustling of branches that seem to touch the window glass, and distant bird sounds with their painful screams, and the fog does not lift even during the day.
This eerie introduction suggests that director Joanna Hogg is leaning towards the gothic ghost story, one of the deep-rooted traditions of English literature and cinema. As the movie progresses, we become aware of his real intention. In his semi-autobiographical film ‘The Souvenir’, inspired by his own youth, and its sequel ‘The Souvenir: Part II’, the British filmmaker looks at the insecure and fragile relationship of a fresh director in the footsteps of his own style, with both his social environment and his mother, based on a toxic relationship he had experienced. Tilda Swinton played the mother, and Honor Swinton Byrne, the real daughter of the great actress of contemporary cinema, played the character of Julie, adapted from Hogg’s youth.
In his film, which puts an end to his personal memoirs for now, Hogg had his eternal friend Tilda Swinton play the role of middle-aged Julie and her very old mother Rosalind, with the help of make-up. What happens in the spooky-looking mansion in the north of Wales turns into a bittersweet reckoning with the hazy past through the mother’s memories and her corrosive control over her daughter.
subject is actually universal: Hogg examines the problem of the inability to grow up of a girl (or boy, it doesn’t matter) who cannot separate from her parents, who has difficulty becoming a separate individual, who is always looking for approval, and struggles with foggy memories behind the fog. In the reckoning with this painful process of rupture, the gothic castle that gives the impression of being haunted, which has become one of the main characters of the film, plays the role of vehicle.
The result is very successful, thanks to the hazy landscapes of Ed Rutherford, with whom he had previously worked in the 2010 film ‘Archipelago’, and the anxiety-increasing work of sound designer Jovan Ajder. This little jewel, which completes the ‘Souvenir’ trilogy, in which Hogg met his best friend Swinton, whom he has been with since his teens, years after his school graduation short film ‘Caprice’, featured only 3 actors in a single location during the pandemic period and Swinton’s very talented real-life dog, Louis.
An impressive chamber film shot with, is one of the best works of the recent period, preparing the audience for a powerful meditation on motherhood, adoption and the time of separation. Let’s leave the surprising finale of the movie to those who will watch it. Hogg used the ‘adagio’ section of Béla Bartók’s well-known work written for ‘strings, percussion and celesta’ (Sz. 106, BB 114) in ‘The Shining’, one of his horror/mystery masterpieces, while creating the eerie atmosphere of his film. For those interested, let’s note in our notes that ‘s included the hypnotic ‘andante tranquillo’ section of the same work.
All about The Eternal Daughter movie.
The Eternal Daughter (2022)
Directed by: Joanna Hogg
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Joseph Mydell, Carly-Sophia Davies, August Joshi, Zinnia Davies-Cooke, Alfie Sankey-Green
Screenplay by: Joanna Hogg
Production Design by: Stéphane Collonge
Cinematography by: Ed Rutherford
Film Editing by: Helle le Fevre
Costume Design by: Grace Snell
Set Decoration by: Naomi Reed
Art Direction by: Byron Broadbent
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some drug material.
Distributed by: A24 Films
Release Date: September 6, 2022 (Venice Film Festival), December 2, 2022 (United States)
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