THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER - BFI London Film Festival 2022 - Day 3

Joanna Hogg's THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER is a quietly powerful, emotionally devastating film that effectively continues the mother-daughter-film-maker triangle depicted in Hogg's previous films SOUVENIR parts one and two. Honor Byrne's young film-maker from those films has now grown up into Tilda Swinton's Julia and Tilda Swinton's Rosalind is now the more elderly mother of the film-maker. And of course, Julia is still a thinly veiled autobiographical expression of writer-director Joanna Hogg. And if you think that's all too meta, remember that Honor Byrne is Swinton's real life daughter.

Okay so back to THIS movie. It's late at night and a taxi pulls up to a country hotel wreathed in mist. My kind of horror film plays out: the surly lone receptionist can't find Julia's booking and makes a fuss about giving her a first floor room even though the hotel appears to be empty. Still she makes the best of making her mother, Rosalind, comfortable. The next day Julia struggles to work on her new script about her relationship with her mother, and seems to be hyper-sensitive to any discomfort her mother might feel. It emerges that Rosalind actually grew up in the house when she was taken in my her aunt during the Blitz.  And in successive visits over the decades, Rosalind's memories are sad as well as happy.

Rosalind seems to have that phlegmatic no-nonsense, self-effacing character of her generation, as epitomised by our late Queen. But Julia is so desperate for everything to be perfect for her mother that she breaks down at the slightest bump in the road. We realise that their relationship, while loving, does not in fact rest of mutual understanding and intimacy. 

As for the rest of the plot I am not sure we needed it. The references to ghost stories, eery bumps in the night, amd self-proclaimed mystery seemed to me to cheapen the whole affair and provided very little actual suspense.

THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 96 minutes.  It played Venice, Toronto and the BFI London Film Festival 2022.

ARCHIPELAGO

Joanna Hogg's debut feature, UNRELATED, was an emotional drama so quietly powerful - so cleanly produced - that I was tempted to tag it Pantheon and dare history to prove me wrong. Her second feature, ARCHIPELAGO, has all the virtues of UNRELATED, and if less immediately gripping that her first film (perhaps because expectations are so much higher?), is still miles ahead of most current cinema in its ability to mine the deeply held frustrations of familial relations. ARCHIPELAGO is a satisfyingly uncomfortable watch - a movie both darkly funny; raw; bitter; and all finely balanced on a knife edge.

The film begins as Edward (Tom Hiddleston) arrives on the Cornish holiday island of Tresco to spend a final fortnight with his family before abandoning a City career for a year's charity work in Africa. The fortnight will consist of walks, bicycle rides, picnics, painting and the occasional dinner. Edward's mother Patricia (Kate Fahy) and sister Cynthia (a scene-stealing Lydia Leonard) are already there not to mention a cook, Rose (Amy Lloyd) and a painting tutor (Christopher Baker). But, much to Ed's chagrin, his girlfriend Chloe hasn't been allowed to come because she's not family with a capital "F", and much to Cynthia and Patricia's discomfort, the father doesn't show up either.

And this brings us to the meat of the story: what family is and what one should expect of them. Ed's family are not supportive of his belated gap year. His mother is quietly negative. ("Ed's decision doesn't reflect badly on his father" when clearly she thinks it does.) His sister is openly, brutally critical. One can tell that both are hitting somewhere near the mark - Ed clearly doesn't know what he is about to do - but there means of expressing it is truly poisonous and stems in some part from frustration with the absent father.

As the film progresses, each member of the family reveals more of themselves despite the covering layers of upper-middle class politeness. There are, however, no big dramatic revelations - no moments of crisis - no moments of catharsis followed by closure. Joanna Hogg maintains the tone of strained emotions throughout - eschewing big bang finishes for an authentic examination of real emotions. The purity and austerity of this approach is underscored by her shooting style, which typically uses static cameras in still frames which may or may not include the faces of the people speaking; avoids introduced lighting often leaving her characters in darkness; and avoids artificial sound-tracks making those uncomfortable silences even more ominous.

The resulting film is difficult, honest and painful, because so much of the behaviour is recognisable. Like her previous film, UNRELATED, ARCHIPELAGO seems to live in a space where characters live in self-delusion but are stripped bare in a sequestered environment. Interns of content, Joanna Hogg reminds me of Nicole Holofcener, the American director who has made similarly painful, scabrous films about the emotional lives of the upper-middle classes. But the austerity of Hogg's style is quite unique.

ARCHIPELAGO played London 2010 and goes on release in the UK today.