Starring Tilda Swinton and Tilda Swinton

Written & Directed by Joanna Hogg

A24/BBC Films, in cinemas now

In a seemingly deserted hotel, a film maker and her elderly mother confront long-buried secrets in their former family home.

I can see why they did it. Tilda Swinton had already played Joanna Hogg’s mother in Souvenir, the director’s largely autobiographical account of her film school years. She had nailed the passive aggressive upper middle-class matriarch (I’ve got a few in my own family so I can vouch for the razor-sharp authenticity of the portrayal). So when Covid came along, and one of the ways to keep the cameras rolling was to have actors multi-role with themselves, a drama where Swinton explores mother and daughter tensions by playing both parts would have been an admirable no brainer – and probably kept an empty Welsh hotel from bankruptcy with the help of a hefty facility fee.

Alex Garland did something similar with the Rory Kinnear multi-role horror, Men, and hats off to both movies for keeping the industry going, but worthiness aside The Eternal Daughter struggles to convince in much the way its male counterpart did. Swinton is great in both roles but without expensive CGI, the shots and eyelines never feel quite right; the reverses always feel forced, especially when the characters rarely share the same frame, and it’s hard to escape the comedic undertones of a Little Britain or Kind Hearts and Coronets. I think part of the problem is that actors tend to overthink their reactions when performing with their imaginary selves and that adds to the sense of artifice.

But is The Eternal Daughter any good as a story? Well… up to a point. While it’s honest and beautifully played, a film maker asking us to watch a film about how guilty she feels for neglecting her mother, because she makes films, did feel indulgently meta at times. Channelling the deserted zeitgeist of lockdown, Hogg has framed the movie as a classic piece of English Gothic ghostery, where there is much eerie wafting of mist and the deserted hotel where Swinton is staying with her mum (Swinton) is full of cold shadowy corridors, and ashen phantom faces appear at the window.

Unfortunately, this is as far as it goes, and while The Eternal Daughter pays lip-service to the tropes of haunted house cinema, there’s no attempt to pay them off. On the BBFC certificate before the movie starts, we are warned that the film contains ‘moderate horror’, but I beg to differ with Ms Kaplinsky (president of the board) because that’s like trying to pass a Vegetable Korma off as a Beef Vindaloo.

Some might argue that the use of ‘horror’ is simply textural and thematic, and I should accept it as a device Hogg is using to take us into the emotional geography of Swinton’s grief. I’m afraid that kind of think gets my hackles up. Horror isn’t a ‘device’ to be worn lightly – it is a genre in its own right and while it is often used to explore rich human territory it does that best when its rules are honoured in full.

Verdict: If you want to see a truly great horror film about the complexities of inter-generational female relationships then I refer prospective audiences to Natalie Erika James’s brilliant Australian chiller, Relic. Unfortunately, by comparison, and despite admirable work from Tilda Swinton, The Eternal Daughter is a lukewarm affair. 5/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com