‘Eternal Daughter’: a ghostly ode to family secrets

Above : Tilda Swinton plays dual roles in Joanna Hogg’s film “The Eternal Daughter.” (Photo/A24)

As children, we often wonder just who our parents truly are. What are/were their hopes and dreams, and how do their desires match up with how their lives have unfolded?

And, most of all, what does any of this have to do with us?

As adult parents, we tend to do the opposite: Who are these children that we’ve borne? How will they manage to cope with the life mysteries that have so often confounded us?

And, most of all, will we remain connected to them as they follow their own life paths … especially if they end up having children of their own?

Some of this is captured in the film “The Eternal Daughter,” written and directed by Joanna Hogg and starring Tilda Swinton in dual roles as mother and daughter. The film is scheduled to open Friday at the Magic Lantern Theatre .

“The Eternal Daughter” tells the story of a woman who books a stay at an old country manor in Wales. Her purpose is to celebrate her mother’s birthday. But pretty soon the hotel, in its aging, creaky way, begins to feel haunted, which then serves as a means for the mother-daughter duo to explore emotions that have long remained hidden.

Hogg, as some of you might know, is the writer-director of “The Souvenir” and “The Souvenir: Part II,” a pairing that Time magazine critic Stephanie Zacharek calls a “semi-autobiographical diptych.”

About “The Eternal Daughter” Zacharek wrote, the film “isn’t just a ghost story but a song, sung by a daughter to her mother across a small table at dinner, or across the space that remains when the people we love have left us.”

She, though, is hardly the only critic who has praise for Hogg and her movie.

Tomris Laffly of The Playlist wrote, “The film’s time-and-logic bending finale reveal arrives as a gut punch, with a restrained parting note both ethereal and lifelike.”

Philip De Semlyen of Time Out wrote, “ ‘The Eternal Daughter’ is also an ode to mothers and daughters that will leave a few teary messes in the stalls, and it’s beautifully acted by Tilda Swinton in not one, but two roles.”

And freelance critic Ty Burr wrote, “The film is extremely tender in registering the affection between a mother and daughter, and there’s a penultimate shot that just about took my breath away. The movie’s a gift, to Hogg’s own late mother and to us.”

I’ll update as the week progresses.