The Eternal Daughter is the latest work from award-winning writer-director Joanna Hogg. She is once again collaborating with her lifelong friend and colleague, Tilda Swinton, for a supernatural drama and mystery. The film tells the story of an estranged mother and daughter journeying to a mysterious hotel, one that has personal ties to the duo as well as a supernatural force with questionable motivation. After a critically successful premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, the film will debut in theaters later this year.
The Eternal Daughter serves as a pseudo-sequel to The Souvenir and The Souvenir, Part II films. The Souvenir films featured Honor Swinton Byrne as the leading character, Julie, with her mother, Tilda Swinton, starring alongside her. The Eternal Daughter places Tilda Swinton in the role of a now-middle-aged Julie while simultaneously playing Julie’s elderly mother. Swinton portrays both characters in a sequence that rivals Netflix’s Living With Yourself and Sam Rockwell’s performance in Moon. Her performance as both characters delivers a mind-boggling, almost hallucinatory effect as Hogg and Swinton contemplate the many complexities of time, memories, and the mother-daughter relationship.
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The Eternal Daughter: The Plot
The Eternal Daughter expands on previous stories from writer and director Joanna Hogg. Hogg’s previous film (The Souvenir films) followed the story of Julie Hart. Now a middle-aged adult, Julie hopes to reconnect with her elderly, estranged mother by traveling to a sentimental destination. Their vacation lands them at a hotel, one that contains a mysterious presence.
A24 offered this official summary of the film:
The mysterious, menacing presence volleys between a supernatural force at work or, rather, something left looming over the relationship between Julie and her mother. The trailer shows Julie making desperate attempts to connect with her mother over dinner, a birthday celebration, and throughout the trip. Yet, something holds the mother back. Further in the trailer, a man ominously declares, “You brought her here. Memories flood back in this place, quietly in the evening, through the building, and on the grounds. And I suppose it is a way of staying in touch.”
An artist and her elderly mother confront long-buried secrets when they return to a former family home, now a hotel haunted by its mysterious past. Featuring a towering, deeply moving performance by Tilda Swinton, acclaimed filmmaker Joanna Hogg’s beguiling latest film is a brilliant and captivating exploration of parental relationships and the things we leave behind.
What memories do they share, and why are they tied to the countryside inn? What caused the rift between this mother and her daughter? Is forging a maternal relationship worth the cost of supernatural torment?
The Eternal Daughter: The Cast and Crew
A24
The Eternal Daughter stars Tilda Swinton (Snowpiercer, Doctor Strange, We Need to Talk About Kevin), Joseph Mydell (Alex Rider), and Carly-Sophia Davies (Midsomer Murders).
Joanna Hogg (Unrelated, The Souvenir, Exhibition) wrote and directed the film. Rose Garnett and Martin Scorsese co-produced the feature, with Ed Guiney, Joanna Hogg, Andrew Lowe, Eimhear McMahon, and Emma Norton serving as producers. The Eternal Daughter was produced by A24, Element Pictures, and BBC Films.
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This marks yet another artistic production from A24, adding to their repertoire of over 120 movies. The film studio has established a marked brand identity with works like The Lighthouse, Midsommar, Hereditary, Moonlight, Uncut Gems, Eighth Grade, Lady Bird, and more. The studio gained its start with small indie productions and has since established itself as one of the most recognized and successful names in cinema.
Release Date
The Eternal Daughter debuted at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, with additional premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival and the 60th New York Film Festival. The film is scheduled for an international theatrical premiere on December 2nd, 2022.
Everything Else We Know
In a Variety interview, Tilda Swinton and Joanna Hogg discussed the poignant themes of the movie. Swinton summarized the relevance and weight of what the movie examines by saying:
The movie bore significant personal value to Hogg, whose mother unexpectedly died during post-production. She said the movie had a “cathartic” effect on her after the death of her mother.
“Something that the film very much looks at, is the pain of thinking of your mother unhappy. And this feeling that we must solve our mother’s unhappiness, and the incapacity to do that.”
Contrastly, Swinton theorized how her mother would have felt about the film and its contemplation of mother-daughter relationships.
“I can imagine certain noises my mother would’ve made while she was alive. I speak as a mother, a mother is not as hard on her child as we are on ourselves — and that’s a shame. It’s a shame that we are so tough on ourselves. So, I think our mothers would be moved to see how tough we are on ourselves, and hope we would forgive ourselves.”
