The Eternal Daughter

 

THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER         B                                                                                   Great Britain  USA  (96 mi)  2022  d: Joana Hogg

I have a husband I neglect completely and I don’t have that much time left, and I don’t have a family beyond you.  I don’t have any children, I’m not going to have anybody to fuss over me when I’m your age.                                                                                                                        —Julie Harte talking to her mother Rosalind (both played by Tilda Swinton)

“No one wants to talk about mortality, and I regret to this day that I was never able to have that conversation with my mother,” Hogg confesses. “I was too fearful of it … I didn’t want to upset her by bringing it up.  But it would have been on her mind, and it would have maybe been a relief to have a conversation about it.  But it just didn’t happen.” (No One Wants to Talk About Mortality - The Atlantic).  From the maker of The Souvenir (2019) and THE SOUVENIR Part II (2021), with Tilda Swinton taking on a more grownup version of the role her daughter Honor Swinton Byrne played in those films, a fictionalized version of the director herself, with Tilda playing the mother, while this one features Tilda in both roles, playing mother and daughter, where you get to watch Tilda Swinton talk to Tilda Swinton in what amounts to a one-woman show.  Hogg collaborated with Swinton on her 1986 short graduation thesis film, Caprice, having known her since they were both ten year old boarding school students at the West Heath Girls’ School in 1971, the former boarding school of Princess Diana, while Hogg is also the godmother of Swinton’s daughter, each mentored by artist, poet, and filmmaker Derek Jarman, loaning Hogg her very first Super 8 camera which she used to make that first short film, only to collaborate again with Swinton on The Souvenir films, with this viewed as a finalizing coda, blurring the line between fiction and memoir.  This becomes a self-reflective memory piece on family and the limits of artistry, as sometimes the process of creating art trespasses into the personal and may have an unintended consequence, exposing family secrets that when released publicly take on a whole other life, creating open wounds that may never heal.  Martin Scorsese is an executive producer on all three films, where there is a printed conversation between them when this film was released, MARTIN SCORSESE AND JOANNA HOGG IN ....  Essentially a two woman film, with Swinton in both roles, this defies audience expectations, creating something minimalist, yet immediately recognizable, as it looks like something we’ve seen before, resembling the Gothic imagination of Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940), but without the nastiness.  In fact, the two women couldn’t be more polite, which has a way of smoothing over the rough edges, but the atmospheric surroundings constantly remind us of something deeply unsettling.  With a dark and moody opening, a car arrives in the darkness, as if immersing viewers onto the foggy moors of Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights (Arnold) (2011), resembling the somnambulistic quality of a Guy Maddin film, as it has that same neon green color scheme and melodramatic yet overly somber musical score, which happens to be Béla Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, Béla Bartók - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, I YouTube (9:02), part of the background music used in Kubrick’s THE SHINING (1980), though the two films use different parts of it.  Yet it’s a haunted house movie, told in the old Gothic style, with a minimum of characters onscreen, mostly a woman and her elderly mother along with their dog (Tilda Swinton’s own Springer Spaniel), where they are seemingly the only guests staying at this old gargoyle-covered countryside hotel that seems tucked under bare trees in a foreboding landscape of dim lights and everpresent fog.  Shot during the isolation of the Covid pandemic on Super 16mm by Ed Rutherford, who also shot two of her earlier works, actually filmed at Soughton Hall in Wales, a 15-bedroom Georgian estate built in 1714 which has never been used in cinema before, though judging by all the peripheral noises and an everpresent camera exploring all the nooks and crannies, this eerily empty hotel appears to be haunted, as if something is constantly lurking nearby, where the omnipresent fog raises certain expectations, creating an environment that overwhelms so completely that it amounts to a character of its own.  But this is simply the framework of a story Hogg wishes to tell, which may be her most personal effort yet, but it’s concealed within a claustrophobic environment that is as telling as anything the characters have to say, literally sweeping viewers into this cacophony of discordant sounds and ominous imagery that is always shrouded in darkness, where the bottom line is that memories haunt us, creating a unique experience that couldn’t be more eerie and ominous, as if plunging us into the depths of the subconscious, out of which emanates a film about loss or impending loss, and an exploration of grief.    

Not much actually happens in this film, requiring a great deal of patience, offering only the barest outlines of a story, and much of that is filled with benevolently perfunctory conversations between mother and daughter, where you really have to dig deep to find meaningful material here, as so much of it plays out on the surface level, leaving plenty to the imagination, yet what’s unseen seems to haunt the living.  Julie is a middle-aged filmmaker taking her elderly mother Rosalind to Wales for her birthday (the same characters in The Souvenir), booking several days in an isolated old manor, a place her mother used to frequent, as it was once owned by her Aunt Jocelyn, spending plenty of her childhood there during an evacuation from the war while attempting to escape the bombs targeting nearby Liverpool, revisiting it many times even as a young woman.  But like many of these old homes in postwar Britain, due to taxes and increased expenses, they’ve been converted to country hotels, and while they promise peace and quiet in the comforts of the countryside, they immediately feel anxious when the chilly desk clerk, Carly Sophia-Davies, has no record of their reservation, or their request for a specific room overlooking the garden, instead she seems completely indifferent, having difficulty finding any available room, claiming the hotel is full of guests, even though they seem to be the only ones there.  Having the dining room to themselves, and the full run of the place, the clerk is equally disinterested about Julie’s request to close the windows and shutters in the rooms above them that seem to be continually banging from the wind, keeping her up all night, as she roams the empty corridors, with the clerk claiming none of the other guests have complained.  Immediately we question our perception of reality, as there’s obviously something going on behind the scenes, with the deadpan clerk absurdly adding a bit of levity to an overly somber film, as she seems constantly annoyed and reluctant to accommodate any of Julie’s requests, caught up, apparently, in her own personal struggles, occasionally seen arguing with a partner that is picking her up in a red sports car with the techno music cranked up as they are leaving the grounds.  While she brought her mother to an old familiar place in hopes it would trigger her memories for the film she wants to make, with each room reminding Rosalind of personal anecdotes she would never have thought of otherwise, she hopes to memorialize her mother before she dies by secretly recording their conversations.  Feeling guilty that this is done without asking consent, Rosalind is reluctant to share, finding herself easily distracted, not really providing the answers she is looking for, carrying a white plastic bag of letters and photographs that she intends to go through, while Julie spends her time working in the attic, the only place with a reliable Wi-Fi signal, making no headway at all on writing a screenplay, obscured by her own challenges, as she’s continually kept up all night, left ruminating on questions swirling in her head about the ghostly events that surround her in a lonely hotel without guests, becoming a film about the creative process and the emotional turmoil it involves.  Much of this is shot through mirror reflections, or long shots down empty hallways, with a spectral figure seen peering through the window, where it’s more suggestive than real, offering various versions of the self, never really addressing any of Rosalind’s concerns openly, as memories aren’t always clear and concise, and can feel muddled, as if lost in a haze, with only moments of clarity.  Nonetheless, Julie only wishes for her mother’s happiness, growing deeply distressed when she learns of so many sorrowful recollections, with memories of war and tragic loss, including a miscarriage, leaving her filled with regret, unaware of the heavy weight she’s been carrying, which may explain her writer’s block, growing deeply uncomfortable, a manifestation of something a younger version of her character Julie says in SOUVENIR II, “I don’t want to see life as it was.  I want to see life as I imagine it to be.”  Filtering someone else’s life through our own existential prism, it only accentuates what we don’t know or understand about those we love, as reality often conflicts with our ideas of the truth.             

While this film made plenty of Best of the Year lists, listed at #3 by Reverse Shot, Best Films of 2022 Reverse Shot, and #5 by the Film Comment poll, Film Comment Announces 2022 Best-of-Year Lists, it’s not an easy watch, particularly finding something substantive out of it, as it definitely loses something if not seen in theaters, where it might otherwise feel overly dark, with so much hidden underneath the tapestry of spooky images, borrowing heavily from the British horror tradition, including Jacques Tourneur’s fog-shrouded NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957), Jack Clayton’s superb adaptation of the Henry James ghost story The Turn of the Screw in The Innocents (1961), Herbert Wise’s ghost story THE WOMAN IN BLACK (1989), and of course Stanley Kubrick’s haunted house thriller THE SHINING (1980), which was shot in England.  The use of horror recalls the deeply buried resentments in Ingmar Bergman’s Bergman, Two from the 70's: Autumn Sonata (Höstsonaten) (1978), featuring Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann as mother and daughter, veering into shockingly unexpected emotional outbursts, while this is a portrait of Hogg’s relationship with her own mother, who died while she was editing the film, leaving her plagued by guilt, associating the film with her death, making this her version of Chantal Akerman’s No Home Movie (2015).  Essentially a film about women whose problems manifest as failures of expression, suppressed desires, and thwarted ambitions, the idea began back in 2008 when Hogg was planning a film about her relationship with her mother, but she was too close at the time, unnerved by the idea of poking around exploring very painful memories, but the passage of time allowed her to consider a different way of approaching the subject, knowing she would make a film about it one day, recalling “We often went on trips together to stay at hotels, sometimes near relatives, and so it was very directly taken from that experience with her.”  Swinton is understated throughout, providing the needed believability in each character, a stabilizing force in stark contrast to the impressionistic maze of Gothic horror that is a constant visual motif, with suggestions of a supernatural presence hovering nearby, which may be a metaphor for death, and while nothing jumps out of the dark striking fear in anyone’s heart, the horror of memory is everpresent here.  While Julie tries her best to care for her mother, she is shocked at her mother’s reactions to a return to what was a family estate, flooding her memories with an overwhelming rush of sad emotions, leaving Julie disheartened, wondering what she’s done bringing her there, but her mother is more firmly grounded, reminding her daughter, “That’s what rooms do.  They hold these stories.”  From an imagination perspective, this film is wonderfully impressionistic, offering fleeting memories, but also long-forgotten correspondences, worn-out paperbacks, long walks with the dog, and formal dining in an empty room, with only four things on the menu, catered to by the disinterested desk clerk who always seems to intrude at the exact wrong moment, invariably interrupting their train of thought, though they always insist they are having a “very lovely time,” leaving things in a state of paralysis, as if stuck in time.  The birthday dinner itself is surreal, with Julie meticulously wanting things done a certain way, becoming anxiously exact, but when the moment arrives the film swerves in a different direction, altering the look of reality, challenging our perceptions, and infusing a different understanding of the mother/daughter relationship which is at the heart of the film.  It’s clear that you can know someone without really knowing them, as evidenced by this family home that was once filled with importance and life, but transformed over time to an empty vessel, a decaying remnant of what it once was, where the physical space of the building is a ghostly presence.  Looking upon our pasts, and the people that matter to us, an emotional chasm exists between how we remember the past and the present, with all its complications.  Memory is fluid, as it comes and goes, never straightforward, which may explain the multiple shots of mirror reflections, working with more close-ups, allowing the characters’ reactions to be observed in greater detail, adding an existential element, and a different version of autobiographical filmmaking, as there’s something unknowable about this hotel and its inhabitants, and a tremendous gulf between the conversations we would like to have with our mothers and daughters, and the ones we actually end up having. 

Falcon Lake

 

Director Charlotte Le Bon

Le Bon with young actor Joseph Engel

The director on the set

Le Bon with Sara Montpetit and Joseph Engel

FALCON LAKE                    B                                                                                                Canada  France  (100 mi)  2022  d: Charlotte Le Bon

If you feel the stories, it’s because they exist.                                                                             —Chloé (Sara Montpetit)

Premiering at Director’s Fortnight at Cannes in 2022, this is ostensibly a ghost story taking place over a summer holiday, where awakened sexual desires give rise to darker impulses, where a shadowy netherworld that feels ethereal and dreamlike seems to follow several of these characters around, but they are the only ones attuned to it.  “You have to be intelligent to find others intelligent,” said French Canadian director Charlotte Le Bon when she appeared at the Toronto Film Festival at the opening screening of her first feature film.  Growing up in Québec before moving to Paris, Le Bon worked as an actress for various French directors while also exploring her passion for art, developing a taste for strangeness through paintings, drawings, and lithographs.  She wrote and directed her first short film JUDITH HOTEL (2018), which invited the strangeness and the dreamlike when it premiered at Cannes.  Co-written by the director with François Choquet, shot by Kristof Brandl on grainy 16mm, with its use of the 4:3 format, a limited amount of time on each reel, and its twilight atmosphere, it evokes the horror genre, recalling the slasher films of cabin-in-the-woods settings, with posters for Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Murnau’s NOSFERATU (1922) on a bedroom wall, and an electronic score from Stockholm-based pianist and composer Shida Shahabi creating layers of tension and suspense, accentuating a disconcertingly eerie mood, where the ruminative, atmospherically dense drama subverts the coming-of-age drama with an everpresent sense of dread.  Seen through the brooding eyes of Bastien (Joseph Engel), a shy 13-year old Parisian who is on holiday with his family renting a cabin in rural Quebec, a young boy with delicate sensibilities, he is enthralled with and becomes increasing close to Chloé (Sara Montpetit), the more outgoing and often idiosyncratic 16-year-old daughter of an old friend of his mother, with both families sharing the same cabin.  Like many films shot today, it has a realist aesthetic, where the minimalist narrative is overshadowed by an infused atmospheric tension, almost like a John Carpenter film, recalling Robert David Mitchell’s It Follows (2014), yet more muted and understated, as it unravels in a different direction, defying all expectations, choosing to focus on the developing romance, as we get a feel for Bastien’s growing interest, never veering into male gaze territory.  Parents have a peripheral role and are barely seen, while secondary characters are similarly viewed as inessential, as the entire focus is on the two kids, who apparently have free reign on what they choose to do each day, which includes partying and interacting with older kids in the area, continually exposing Bastien’s naïve vulnerability, while Chloé is more easily drawn into their world.  Nothing is ever spelled out, as things seemingly happen spontaneously, where it’s clear Bastien is often in over his head, nicknamed Houdini by the older boys due to his disappearing act, vanishing without a word, but he plays along, mostly as a passively interested observer who tries to act with confidence, yet he’s drawn into something he doesn’t really understand.  Chloé’s free and easy manner is like a siren’s song, offering a sexual allure that he can’t help but be mesmerized by, but she also disappears at the drop of a hat, only to return home late at night, often disheveled or inebriated, with Bastien, along with his five-year-old brother Titi (Thomas Laperriere), surprisingly sharing her bedroom, so she’s on his mind 24-hours per day.       

The gist of the film is an alternatingly sunny or rainy and stormy summer retreat, far away from the conventions of the world, literally inhabiting an isolated lake tucked beneath the natural surroundings of old-growth forests, mostly shot in and around Gore, Québec, which is part of the mountainous Laurentides region.  According to Chloé, the lake is haunted, suggesting it’s part of the mythology of the region, something the older kids joke about and make mocking reference to, as most ignore that kind of stuff as mere talk, never really taking it seriously.  Bastien’s connection to Chloé lures him into this superstition, as it’s something she talks about frequently, a fan of folklore and local legends, believing the ghost of a drowned child is haunting the lake.  Accordingly, the opening image feels haunted, as we’re seeing what appears to be a dead body face-down in a lake, with the movie title appearing on the screen in Gothic lettering, but then just as mysteriously the body comes alive, bursting with life and movement, challenging our expectations, yet that ominous omen sticks with viewers throughout the entire film, becoming a melancholic reflection on death, with recurring images of dead trees, making us question the façade of summer bliss.  Adapted from the graphic novel Une Soeur by Bastien Vivès, the slowly developing, symbolically charged film is moody and subtly layered, never in a hurry to get anywhere, building a sensuous mood of intoxication through aroused teenage curiosity, becoming a character study that hints at something lurking underneath, mostly told through the power of suggestion, evocative of a tone poem, perfectly capturing the haunting nature of adolescence and young love, a time of awkwardness, hope, and exploration, with hormones racing through your body, where you are left with an alienated sense of unease, as lyrical passages build to sustain a mood, The Beauty Of Falcon Lake YouTube (3:29).  While there are feelings expressed about being left alone or not belonging anywhere, with feelings of strangeness and solitude, the two have an unusual chemistry, most all of it unspoken, where there’s a coming-of-age aspect of immediate attraction, as she invites him into her bad and even shares a bath, with no signs of vulgarity, yet there are also banal moments of tedium, mostly provided by the adults, as it’s clear the wonders of teenage life exists in a parallel space with a completely different intensity level.  Much of this is shot at night, with the characters becoming nocturnal shadows alone in the dark, dreamlike reflections of our inner soul, with supernatural undertones, where the hushed music accentuates the restlessness of youth, broken down into the fleeting moments of new experiences, beautifully captured in this brief moment when two shadows merge into one, A scene from Falcon Lake (2022) YouTube (42 seconds).  This film is not built through dialogue, but in short, fragmented conversations, accentuating small, near indecipherable moments held by the camera, as emotional cues are gleaned through silences, facial expressions, and subtle glances between characters.  Despite playing the festival circuit, this film has barely been seen around the world, with next to no promotion and little fanfare, given an extremely limited release.      

At least initially, Bastien has no interest in being there, feeling more like he’s being dragged along by his parents, spending much of his time wearing headphones, an easy escape from reality.  Chloé pretty much ignores him at first, more drawn to hanging out with the older kids, but they also disappoint, feeling more like immature, sex-craved boys, where their behavior is utterly predictable, as all they care about is drinking, drugs, parties, and opportunities for sex.  Perhaps seeing a part of herself in Bastien, as he’s mostly aloof and standoffish, feeling anxiety from peer pressure, a place she often finds herself as well, routinely discovering that she never fits in, that she’s somehow different, causing her to stand apart.  But from what we can see, that’s to her credit, as these older boys are a dime a dozen with zero personality, where you can find them pretty much anywhere, so spending time with Bastien allows them both to explore undiscovered waters.  At least initially, she takes him under her wing, drinking stolen alcohol for probably the first time, and the results are what you might expect, but their rebelliousness brings them closer together, quickly establishing some trust.  She invites him to tag along at a party, using him as a safety net with older friends, which allows her to defy expectations with no repercussions.  She’s fascinated by the macabre, filling his head with ghost stories, Exclusive Clip - The Ghost of Falcon Lake YouTube (1:56), which allows them to stage a fake death, while they also play at scaring each other by disguising themselves as ghosts, wearing a simple white sheet, which becomes part of their normal routine.  None of this feels particularly spooky or foreboding, but is more in line with kid behavior.  It’s the musical soundtrack, however, and the way it is filmed that reminds us of the darker implications.  This feels like a unique way to express teenage anxieties, cloaked in an underlying interest in morbidity, where the spectral world of ghosts channels their inner thoughts.  Her mother thinks she’s only seeking attention, while a boy she likes calls her childish, suggesting she likes to embellish the truth, calling into question what she’s really like and who she really is, but Bastien is the real conveyor of teenage angst, as without Chloé, he has pretty much nobody, leaving him alone on an island, where she is his sole lifeline, while she’s able to find a circle of friends, even if she detests them much of the time, viewing her as an object of conquest rather than demonstrating any romantic inclinations.  With Bastien it’s different, as she’s calling the shots, where at least in her eyes, he’s a safe alternative to the boorish advances of the older boys.  For him, it feels like she literally fell into his lap, like an apparition consuming him day and night, and he’s uncomfortable sharing her with others, as he’d prefer to have her all for himself, but in that regard he often finds himself as the odd man out.  In the end, there’s a weird twist that may catch some offguard, like a shock to the system, with the lake bordering upon the real and the fantastic, where the power of suggestion looms large, but the artful ambiguity gets right to the heart of the matter, even as nothing is ever explained.  It’s a poetic touch that caps off a multilayered challenge to the senses, feeling like something audacious and authentic at the same time.  Winner of the Best New Director’s award at the 2022 Chicago Film Festival, “Charlotte Le Bon’s film respects the point of view of the protagonist without condescension, conveying the youthful maturity of the characters with energy and poise.  Featuring unexpected moments of humor and repose, this warm coming of age story offers keen observations about the complexity of emotions that come with adulthood.”