Venice 2022: The Eternal Daughter
VENICE / A24While some consider ghosts to be supernatural entities, be it malicious or well-intentioned, that do not exist, there are actually real ghosts that surround everyone. Ghosts are memories that attach themselves to places, resurfacing when treading old ground, a bond that is eternal. Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter is a classic ghost story through and through, following in the tradition of British greats like M.R. James and Henry James, only that the horror comes third to the drama and atmosphere.
4 years after her triple turn in Suspiria, Tilda Swinton delivers another dual performance that sees her playing a filmmaker and her family mother. They return to a former family home that has been turned into a hotel, seemingly empty except for the young concierge (Carly-Sophia Davies) and groundskeeper (Joseph Mydell). Over their stay, the mother starts losing herself in reveries tied to the place she lived in most of her life, while her daughter roams the halls at night, searching for the source of a bothersome noise that keeps her awake at night.
Both in its presentation and characters, The Eternal Daughter works as a stealth sequel to The Souvenir duology. The meta element that surfaced at the end of the 2021 sequel is more subtly present here: Hogg herself had been meaning to explore her relationship with her elderly mother, but was unable to work out an effective script, which is exactly what Swinton’s artist is going through. Stories of motherhood and the impending doom that comes with aging are constant themes from this year’s Venice Film Festival, and Hogg tackles it fearlessly and cleverly. She paints a picture of herself, her career, and her marriage in a very honest way, fully aware that she will never have children. In a way, the long and painful process that is developing a film is akin to giving birth, the “child” becoming fully grown only after its release.
Just like the finest stories of hauntings and ghosts, The Eternal Daughter manages to go against all odds and feature some genuinely chilling moments of tension. Swinton’s nightly trips, with long static shots of hallways hued in green lights from the Exit signs, courtyards shrouded in fog, and the eerie atonal flute score playing in the background, are more unnerving than most straightforward horror films. There are shades of The Shining and even Memoria in here, but The Eternal Daughter ends up being its own beast, very different and very personal for Hogg. When Joseph Mydell is first introduced as a silhouette, it is quite unnerving for both audiences and Swinton’s younger character, but what follows is more akin to the emotional exchanges between Dick Hallorann and Danny Torrance in King’s book, in a standout scene that further explores the lingering presence of memories, both good and bad, in the places that people inhabit.
The Eternal Daughter would work wonders as a double-feature with Celine Sciamma’s Petite Maman. Both magical tales of daughters bonding with their mothers, both very quiet, minimalist, and subdued, and both coming together beautifully in surprisingly moving endings. Likely too slow for many viewers and less visually inventive than The Souvenir: Part Two, but Joanna Hogg has made another brilliant piece of cinema, with Tilda Swinton proving once again that she is one of the all-time greatest performers.