Director: Joanna Hogg
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Joseph Mydell and Carly-Sophia Davies
Premiere: 12/5/23
★★★
In ‘The Eternal Girl’, gothic melodrama directed by Joanna Hogg, a filmmaker (Tilda Swinton) seeks inspiration in her former family home, a mansion converted into a hotel. accompanying you his elderly mother (also Tilda Swinton), Whose memory do you want to cherish in your new movie?
The first chords of the new movie from the director of “The Souvenir” (2019) show a foray into the genre cinema. Coming home opens the door to a mystery. Early walks through the mansion’s rooms suggest ghosts are there. And the conversation between mother and daughter indicates the idea of the duo, visually formulated in advance with the choice of the same actress for both characters. And all this is true and not at the same time. Shooting this hazy story with her usual grace, Joanna Hogg digs deep into the movie genre, yes.
Is this a ghost movie? But it distills their codes, robs them. It relativizes the mystery and removes both surprise (not so much revelation) and shock. That’s not to say there isn’t unrest in his film: Backed by Ed Rutherford’s superb cinematography, Hogg transforms this mansion in the middle of nowhere into a meaningful phantasmagoria. But it’s definitely not a genre movie. The director uses the settings, atmospheres, and characters of a gothic horror film to address other types of anxiety, particularly those of anxiety. Fear of not knowing how to interpret and crystallize in fiction (in her painful writing), neither what memories offer you, nor what spaces and places make you think, what leads you to it.