The threads that bind this atmospheric drama from Joanna Hogg to her previous two films might not be as tightly woven as those that link the two chapters of The Souvenir, but they are there nonetheless. Tilda Swinton plays two characters. She reprises her role from The Souvenir: Rosalind, the mother of aspiring film-maker Julie (played in The Souvenir by Swinton’s daughter, Honor Swinton Byrne). She also takes on the role of Julie, now in late middle age and fluttering breathlessly around her frail, elderly mother during a weekend break to a seemingly deserted country house hotel. Swathed in dry ice and surrounded by the bony, pointing fingers of the bare winter tree branches, the gothic mansion looks like a cover illustration on a paperback edition of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. And with an eerie, plaintive woodwind motif in the score and sound design that emphasises every arthritic architectural grumble, Hogg leans into the influence of British supernatural storytelling – it’s two parts Hammer, one part Tales of the Unexpected.
Like The Souvenir, The Eternal Daughter deals with grief and loss. But while the death of Julie’s boyfriend Anthony leaves an aching absence in The Souvenir, here the memories of loved ones become a physical presence. And there are plenty of memories, not all of them happy – the glowering building that is now the hotel was once a family home in which Rosalind spent her wartime childhood.
Hogg fills the snaking corridors of the hotel with a shivering sense of unease but stops short before the film tips over into genuine scares. Ultimately, it’s a benign kind of spookiness, like that of Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman. But for all its decorous restraint, this is emotionally potent storytelling.
