The Eternal Daughter

(Joanna Hogg, UK/USA, 2022)

In The Souvenir (2019) and The Souvenir Part II (2021), Tilda Swinton and daughter Honor Swinton Burne respectively played Rosalind and Julie – modelled loosely on writer-director Joanna Hogg and her mother.

The Eternal Daughter transposes the Julie-Rosalind relationship into another setting, decades later – and, this time, Swinton takes both roles. It is a moving double-performance.

The setting is a somewhat spooky, mist-covered, largely empty mansion in Wales – now a hotel, but once the place where Rosalind grew up.

Hogg offers a frisson of mystery and suspense – even horror – with a nod to such minimalist masters as Jacques Tourneur and Jack Clayton; but these elements are used in a subtle and poetic (rather than bombastic) manner. Much is carried, here, by the delicate design of the off-screen sound.

The film’s true heart is the tender but difficult tie between mother and daughter. Where does one identity end and the other begin? What roles do they find themselves playing at different phases and ages of a lifetime?

Do not expect the typical trickery of movies featuring one actor in two roles: there are no shots over the shoulder of a stand-in, and little digital compositing – except at the most necessary, heart-breaking moment. The entire film, one feels, is built for just this moment (do not spoil it for anybody, please).

It’s a minor-key, modest work for Hogg (who usually deploys more ambitious dispositifs), yet impressive and jewel-like, all the same. The cast is small, but Carly-Sophia Davies is unforgettable as the bitchy, indifferent receptionist – and a dog named Louis (Swinton’s own) almost steals the show.

© Adrian Martin 29 December 2022