Posts Tagged ‘Joanna Hogg’

THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER: 3 ½ STARS. “It’s not about thrills, it’s about mood.”

“The Eternal Daughter,” now playing in theatres, is a gothic ghost story set at a hotel, but don’t check in expecting thrills and chills. This is psychological drama that plays upon the power of memories to create a sense of unease.

Written and directed by Joanna Hogg, the film stars Tilda Swinton in a dual role as screenwriter Julie Hart and her elderly mother Rosalind. Julie is in the early stages of writing a film about her relationship with her mother and has planned a stay at a stately, but remote hotel that once belonged to Rosalind’s aunt, in Wales. In the quiet of the Welsh countryside Julie hopes to mine her mother’s memories for details to enrich her screenplay.

When she was evacuated from London during the Blitz, Rosalind lived at the hotel, then a grand country mansion. Julie questions her about that time, “Were you aware of the war going on?” but Rosalind is reticent to dredge up some of the old memories. She remembers the happy times, but grows heartfelt when evoking the death of her brother, lost in the war during battle over the English Channel.

“You always said you had such happy memories here,” says Julie. “Oh mom, I’m so sorry. I feel so bad for bringing you here.”

“I did have happy memories here,” Rosalind replies, “but I also had other memories here and they’re all still alive.”

Despite her mother’s attempts to placate her, Julie is distraught at the pain she has caused by bringing Rosalind back to her childhood home. “It’s really difficult for me to think of her as being sad,” Julie says.

There is a fuzzy line between fantasy and reality in “The Eternal Daughter.” The old hotel, run by a tetchy front desk clerk (Carly-Sophia Davies), whose passive-aggression brings some humor to the staid situation, creaks in the night and shadows loom in the corners. It is the perfect Gothic breeding ground for Julie’s growing dread and paranoia. Director Hogg takes her time revealing the film’s direction, and whether or not characters, like the groundskeeper Bill (Joseph Mydell) are real or a figment of Julie’s imagination.

It’s not about thrills, it’s about mood. As the two women attempt to connect, to find a way through the memories to a real, tangible place, Hogg creates melodramatic psychological miasma that questions the very proceedings on the screen. There are no easy answers, as Swinton, masterfully playing both mother and daughter, explores the connection between reality, fantasy and memory, but the questions about identity left by the story will linger.

THE SOUVENIR PART II: 3 ½ STARS. “Did you avoid the temptation to be obvious?”

It’s rare to see a “Part II” on an arthouse flick title, but here we are. “The Souvenir Part II,” starring the mother and daughter duo of Tilda Swinton and Honor Swinton Byrne, and now playing in theatres, picks up where 2019’s “The Souvenir’s” coming of age story left off.

In that movie, film student Julie (Byrne) falls into a life-changing relationship with an older, arrogant man named Anthony. His death from a heroin overdose sends her reeling.

The new film sees Julie attempt to process Anthony’s death by making a graduation movie as a “memorial” for her late partner. As the project moves forward, it’s apparent Julie, who didn’t know Anthony was a heroin addict, is struggling to make sense of his loss. From the beginning her idea is met with bewilderment by her professors who don’t like the script and her producing partner (Jaygann Ayeh) who grows frustrated with her choice in actors.

“The Souvenir Part II” is a quiet, meticulous film about how artists mine personal experience to create art, to find a voice. Swinton Byrne’s Julie develop into a filmmaker, an artist and person who creates her own path. It is a lovely, delicate-but-steely, natural performance that digs deep into Julie’s maturity, personal and professional. It’s a pleasure to see Swinton and Swinton Byrne interact as mother and daughter in the film. There’s an authenticity to those scenes that feels like a warm hug.

“The Souvenir Part II” is based, in part, on director Joanna Hogg’s experience, and drips with complex ideas and emotions. As Julie heals herself, the film hauntingly has one eye on her past while the other looks to her future.

The filmmaking is more about mood than straightforward storytelling. It’s as if Hogg had a question from Julie’s film school classmate Patrick (Richard Ayoade) ringing in her head as she made the film. “Did you avoid the temptation to be obvious?” he asks. She did, and the movie is better and more challenging for it.