It's hard to remember a film that's as completely carried by a single actor as The Eternal Daughter. Tilda Swinton is on screen for practically every second of the new film by Joanna Hogg, playing both the accomplished filmmaker Julie and her elderly mother Rosalind.
The film initially plays like a comedy, mostly thanks to Carly-Sophia Davies's small but hilarious role as the blunt and immensely unhelpful receptionist at the hotel where Julie and Rosalind are staying. The humour soon takes a backseat, however, to a general sense of unease: there's seemingly no one else staying at the stately but remote hotel, and Julie is kept awake at night by strange banging sounds.
The purpose of their stay gradually becomes clear. Julie is attempting to write a film about her relationship with her mother, and she chose this hotel because of her mother's personal history with the building, which brings out both fond and traumatic memories.
The Eternal Daughter is an intensely lonely film. Even though much of the dialogue consists of conversations between mother and daughter, the fact that both are played by Swinton creates an impression of solitude, since there's usually only one character on screen at a time. At times, the film seems like it might curdle into a horror — especially in one momentarily scary shot — even though it never really does.
Instead of thrills, Hogg offers an insightful, emotional look at the mother-daughter relationship: the tenderness as well as the unspoken frustrations just below the surface, and the way their dynamic has transformed, with Julie showing an almost maternal level of care for Rosalind. Swinton embodies both roles brilliantly — although these are stuffy, upper-class Brits who don't show much emotion, so it's a performance of subtleties rather than a grand acting masterclass.
The Eternal Daughter is just an hour and a half long, but it still tests attention spans with its slow pace, tiny pandemic-era cast and barely-there score. But as its mysteries and emotions gradually pay off, it rewards viewers' patience.
(A24)The film initially plays like a comedy, mostly thanks to Carly-Sophia Davies's small but hilarious role as the blunt and immensely unhelpful receptionist at the hotel where Julie and Rosalind are staying. The humour soon takes a backseat, however, to a general sense of unease: there's seemingly no one else staying at the stately but remote hotel, and Julie is kept awake at night by strange banging sounds.
The purpose of their stay gradually becomes clear. Julie is attempting to write a film about her relationship with her mother, and she chose this hotel because of her mother's personal history with the building, which brings out both fond and traumatic memories.
The Eternal Daughter is an intensely lonely film. Even though much of the dialogue consists of conversations between mother and daughter, the fact that both are played by Swinton creates an impression of solitude, since there's usually only one character on screen at a time. At times, the film seems like it might curdle into a horror — especially in one momentarily scary shot — even though it never really does.
Instead of thrills, Hogg offers an insightful, emotional look at the mother-daughter relationship: the tenderness as well as the unspoken frustrations just below the surface, and the way their dynamic has transformed, with Julie showing an almost maternal level of care for Rosalind. Swinton embodies both roles brilliantly — although these are stuffy, upper-class Brits who don't show much emotion, so it's a performance of subtleties rather than a grand acting masterclass.
The Eternal Daughter is just an hour and a half long, but it still tests attention spans with its slow pace, tiny pandemic-era cast and barely-there score. But as its mysteries and emotions gradually pay off, it rewards viewers' patience.