Familiar Ghosts

The Eternal Daughter (2022) - Hogg A big black sedan rolls in the foggy English countryside. The sun is setting. Ominous flute piece is playing in the background. The car finally pulls up to a grand manor at dusk. If it weren’t for the car, you'd think of the opening sequence of The Eternal Daughter as the start of a Hammer Horror film or an adaptation of a Henry James novel. We are introduced to a mother, Rosalind, and daughter, Julie (both played by Tilda Swinton) and Rosalind's dog, Louis. They are arriving late to check in and the curt, young receptionist (Carly-Sophia Davis) has no records of them reserving the specific room on the second floor. After much polite haranguing, the receptionist relents and the mother and daughter finally settle in to the room they wanted. This is not a good start for the stay Julie was hoping for.

It is slowly revealed that Julie is a filmmaker working on a project about her mother and the grand inn they are staying in was once belonged to Rosalind's family. She has a lot of memories spending time in the place. Julie timed the visit as Rosalind's birthday and early Christmas celebration and mom seems pleased and sad at the same time. Julie wants very much to connect with her mom and please her but doesn't really seem to know how, other than superficial level. She is also at a loss on how to proceed with her project. And there is some supernatural occurrence in the manor that interferes with her work as well. Julie hears noises at night and can't sleep. When complained to the receptionist, she was told that the room above her has been vacant. Julie sees a ghostly figure at the windows while walking the dog outside. It also seems unusual that there are no other guests in sight other than her and mom. They dine alone and joke about sampling every meal on the menu in their stay.

Using the gothic horror trope, Joanna Hogg creates yet another meta-auto fiction about her own complicated relationship with her mother. Hogg's yearning for connecting with her mother through making a film about their relationship and feeling guilty about it at the same time, using the same actress playing those roles is in tune with real life mother-daughter team (Swinton and Rose Swinton Byrne) in Souvenir playing mother-daughter. Eternal Daughter takes the step further, yet getting no clear answers on finding out more about her own mother or closure of some kind she longed for. And that frustration is all illustrated in the film. After all, many of Victorian ghost stories are manifestation of repressed emotions and feelings. Swinton is glorious in a dual role in her white wig, pretty much carrying a conversation with herself. It is a subtly devastating performance - in many of the film's close-ups both as a mother and daughter, she conveys that nervousness of not trying to hurt one another, or in this case, herself, in that educated, polite British way. Hogg aces again.

A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Woman

The Souvenir: Part 2 (2021) - Joanna Hogg At the end of The Souvenir, our protagonist Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne), a film student, was grappling with the death of her charistmatic, destructive and predatory boyfriend Anthony (Tom Burke) and her next chapter in life just beginning. In The Souvenir: Part 2, we pick up right where we left off. The second part of this autobiographical story by director Joanna Hogg, has an air of built in familiarity, like a warm stove in a cold night. Here the mood is uplifted, more celebratory. And it has lots of humor as well which was lacking in the first film. All the peripheral characters in the first one gets more screen time also. And its metatextual movie-within-a-movie-within-a-movie gives more depths and reflects on how we remember/misremember the past with blesmishes and all. Like her other films, Part 2 reflects on the life lessons, and the fact that only way to learn them is to live through it. It's a beautifully realized and impeccably acted film. Oh, it also has the best soundtrack of the season.

With Anthony's shadow still largely looming in Julie's life, she is still grieving and suffering greatly with the guilty conscience that she could've somehow saved him. Deep down she knows she couldn't have, but she very much wants someone else to tell her it wasn't her fault.

In order to graduate from school, with her circle of mates, she decides to embark on making a film about her experience with Anthony. When she presents her script to get the funding from school, the faculty committee is less than impressed with her presentation: first of all, her script is held together with red ribbons and doesn't even have scene headings. She also decided to use her fellow student Garance (Adriane Labed), instead of a professional actor to play the lead. Even though it's based on her life experience - which is a dramatic concession because she originally wanted to make a movie about working class people in Sunderland, the commitee feels it's out of her character and doesn't seem there's enough connections between main characters. The irony is, it was the same committee who wanted to stir her away from making a film on the subject that she doesn't know much about. So essentially, Julie is (re)making The Souvenir as her graduate film. With school funding for her movie in jeopardy, Julie asks her supportive mom (Tilda Swinton, Byrne's real-life mother) again for the fiancial help.

It's not only school committee's approval that Julie has to deal with, after a grueling pre-production process in choosing actors - too good looking, need more authenticity, etc, she runs into squables and has to deal with clash of egos everywhere she turns and its mostly due to her inexperience and incompetence. Just like every young filmmakers, she doesn't know what she is doing most of the time!

Hogg, a veteran TV director with decades of experiences, who started her feature film career in 2007, has no qualms about showing her young self's incongruity, and bullshit personas of twenty something always project on themselves. The hubris of youth is universal and there is no need to be apologetic or embarrassed about.

Swinton Byrne is great as a naive young woman collecting all the souvenir in her life in shaping herself as an artist. Tilda Swinton gracefully recedes and disappears into her greying mom role perfectly, playing a woman of privilege tickled by her artistic daughter's endeavor, taking up pottery classes to a varying success. Richard Aoyade steals the show as Patrick, a pompous older student whose career is just taking off. We needed to see more of him in the first film and now we are richly rewarded here. Patrick is first seen directing a huge musical film production on stage. His ego-maniacal behavior on and off the set, shouting at onlookers and reporters, defending his decision to do a musical by pointing his finger at the gloomy London sky. As a gifted comedian, Aoyade's delivery is pitch perfect as Patrick, an extremely arrogant, yet superbly talented individual who lacks social niceties. Hence it is he who can blurt out the painful truth as he sees it for Julie to move on after her 'memorial for Anthony' is done.

A long, fantastical sequence of Julie's thesis film hilariously highlights how an artist sees her creations and how she remembers her experiences versus reality of what happened. The Fellini-esque sequence and out of body experience portrayed in Julie's film has nothing in common with how we perceived her relationship with Anthony in somber The Souvenir, at least in its visual presentation. But it strikes the cord on an emotional level- his death and her heart being shattered to millions of pieces remain true.

All the people we encounter, those little memorable moments we pick up throughout life shape us who we are. The Souvenir: Part 2 is a celebration of that achievement. It's a marvelously inventive, self-effacing film that is also immensely affecting and moving. Definitely one of the year's best.

Amour fou

The Souvenir (2019) - Hogg







Joanna Hogg's new film, The Souvenir, drawing from her own experience in her 20s, tells a delicate story of amour fou. On the onset it looks like another one of those involving a charismatic older man taking advantage of a younger, more fragile woman story, or some fluff about a rich white girl being manipulated, but Hogg is such a strong director/writer who has an ability to deeply empathize with her characters, you can't help but be moved by it in the end.

Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) is a film school student from an affluent family. She is still figuring things out. She wants to make a film about working class people in Sunderland: a story of a boy and his strong attachment to his mother. Her advisors try to steer her toward making something that she knows and is perhaps more comfortable with. But just like anyone around that age, she is quietly rebellious and wants to go through it in her own way. She is afraid that she won't grow as a person if she doesn't get out of her comfort zones.

Julie meets Anthony (Tom Burke). With his slurring words, arrogant but confident attitude and bitter outlooks on life, he is extremely magnetic to her. He is apparently working for the Foreign Affairs agency or something mysterious like that (we never get to see him working really). It's the Thatcher's England in the 80s. There are bombs going off on the street and news of kidnappings on the radio.

The romantic notion of being in a relationship with a mysterious, intelligent, charismatic person, Julie neglects to see his imperfections - he is always broke and constantly asking for money and has needle marks on his arms. She is so green that it takes her a while to realize that Anthony is a heroin addict. It is infuriating for the viewer as she forgives him and lets him get away with taking full advantages of her financially time and time again as he lies and even steals from her to satiate his habit. Against good judgment, she keeps asking for money from her parents, especially from her stern but caring mother (Tilda Swinton, Honor Swinton byrne's real life mother).

Their intense relationship is eating Julie up and she falls behind in her studies and gets isolated from her circle of friends. But the film makes unexpected turns: after catching him red handed with a needle, she finally kicks him out. She puts her life back on track - studies, new lovers etc. Anthony appears in her life again. He is still broke, charming but broken. He cries and suffers greatly while kicking the habit.

Even the power dynamic has changed, Julie can't help but loving him.

Every writer or film director encounters the criticism at some point or another when they try to create something not related to your life or your background. The Souvenir examines this aspect in the film. But every film Hogg has done so far, there are elements from her life in it. And she is not apologetic about it. Calling The Souvenir an autobiographical filmmaking would be selling the film short. It's a delicate film that doesn't seem to have a special agenda other than humanizing the aspect of the people she encountered earlier in her life. With her baby face and pale complexion and her gaping mouth, Swinton Byrne is terrific in the role of Julie. But it's Tom Burke who steals the show here. His charming yet slightly dangerous demeanor - a cross between Oliver Reed and Hugh Grant is magnetic.

We meet people in our lives who changes and shapes you when you are on the verge of adulthood for better or worse. The Souvenir succeeds in eulogizing that period of your life lovingly and poignantly. One of the year's best.

Outside Looking In: Joanna Hogg Interview

With her new film Exhibition beginning a two-week exclusive engagement at the Film Society of Lincoln Center today, along with her two previous films Unrelated and Archipelago getting theatrical runs concurrently, British filmmaker Joanna Hogg is in town and I was lucky enough to catch up with her for a chat.

I saw Exhibition at last year's New York Film Festival and was blown away by it, so I was eager to pick her brains about her Antonioni-esque use of the environment in her family/relationship dramas. Unguarded and sincere, she opened up to all the questions and explained away lengthily much more so than many other directors I've talked with over the years. For this, I thank you Ms. Hogg.

An exclusive theatrical run of Exhibition starts 6/20 and continues through 7/3. Unrelated and Archipelago have a one-week engagement 6/27 - 7/3 at FSLC. Please visit their website for more info.

All throughout your films, the settings, the places play important roles. Do you have certain places in mind when you start writing a script?
 

With all three of my feature films, they all started with a specific place in mind. It's very important for me to have an idea about the place. I don't see the settings for my films as 'locations'. It's fundamental for me that it's about a place that I know very well, that I have a lot of connection with. That was with all three films, a place being a springboard for the story.

Compared to your previous films, EXHIBITION is even more place specific. This modern architecture house the couple calls home: Can you tell me a little about this house and how you decided to shoot there?

Yes. Would you want me to go through all three films with that? Because each one was all very different.

Of course, by all means!

With Unrelated, which was my first feature film after many years of working in television, and toward the end of my television career -- had worked about 12 years there -- I started renting a small apartment in Italy on a farm in the south of Sienna. And I found this place which became very inspiring to me. Whenever I stayed there, I started to write ideas. I was painting when I was there. I felt very creative when I was there in this apartment. And it was a lot to do with the land around it. It was very close to a motorway. It sort of cut through the idea of sort of 'Tuscan village life'. The motorway was only a mile long and didn't go anywhere. 

But the whole landscape was kind of exciting to me and I was trying to think of stories and ideas for a film because being in television for so long I very much wanted to do cinema. So I started to come up with the idea but all set within this place where I had the apartment. And that eventually turned into Unrelated. So it came from living in this place myself. The place became a creative space for me.

And ARCHIPELAGO?

As a child, my family used to go on Easter holidays to an island off of Cornwall, the Scilly Isles. We went to the same island for many years and stayed in the same place. This was in the 70s through early 80s. There was only one place to stay, this little hotel. And I revisited after a long time. I had a very powerful feeling being in this place reminding me of my childhood holidays and of love of the landscape. 

I think the love of a place also often to do with familiarity. Childhood memories and connections can be very intense and that place took me back to those feelings. So I decided to set the film on that island. But again, I didn't have a complete story in mind. I had to construct it. But I constructed it from getting to know this place again.

But I must say that it sounds so far that both Unrelated and Archipelago are autobiographical and I would say they are not. With Archipelago...

[We are interrupted by loud police sirens outside whizzing by.]

Sirens here are so crazy! It has a very different sound in London... it really intrudes here, doesn't it? Sorry I am losing my train of thought here.

So with Archipelago, yes I completely constructed the story. Of course there are ideas in there that are very personal but it's...yeah, my family wasn't like that. There are things I have experienced that are in there but it's sort of a big cauldron you throw different things into and it becomes its own animal.

Yes, I was gonna ask you about that aspect of your films but I'll save it for later. So we move on to EXHIBITION.

Exhibition. That was different because I knew the house and I knew the architect who built the house in 1969. I met him in the early 90s when he was still living in the house he built for himself and his wife. I became friends with them and the house made a big impression on me. So it was somewhere I thought about when I started thinking about making a film about a couple who are artists. It seem to be a perfect container for that sort of story in a way.

Who was the architect?

James Melvin.

It was built in 1969?

'69, yes.

It looks very modern.

Yes. It had a redesign in the mid 90s by an architectural practice called Saurbruch Hutton, based in Berlin. They are colorist in a way. They work with color. They can possibly be credited to introducing color into modern architecture. A lot of the color elements in the house were added by them. The original 60s design was very monochromatic and didn't have many color at all. When they redesigned it in the 90s, they added colors. 

For instance, the pink sliding doors you see in the film which became a practical effect in his study. And there are other parts of the house that had a color added to them. The fundamental details of the house -- the large glass windows, the spiral stair case, the lift in the middle, the structure of the house is exactly how it was. That's all James Melvin. Some people think that there was this big disruption in the late 60s but it's not. It's not pure in a sense but that's why it's more interesting. It's not a museum piece. It's had people lived in.

I am assuming everything was shot on location.

Yes.

Were there any challenges shooting on location?

It's interesting you ask that because I have a friend who is a photographer/cinematographer who's been to the house himself, said to me that he didn't think it was possible to shoot there. It's a cube. It's almost square with the lift block in the middle of it. So when you are in the living room, you got this interruption of the lift block. So he thought it would be very difficult to shoot in. And also he thought the amount of glass, in terms of reflection, it would be impossible to deal with.

Of course! Those things he said would be difficult became the gift for the film. Because I was interested in the reflections. You see a lot of the architecture through the reflection because when you are looking outside you are looking back at the house with yourself in the way. So that inside out aspect was very interesting to me. And even the lift block, I mean, was a kind of nice interruption. So the you don't see the space completely. It's always broken up by something. In fact, with Ed Rutherford, my cinematographer, we avoided shooting too wide. Whenever we set up a shot and we go wide, the panoramic view looked like a real estate agent catalog. Sort of a property photograph. (laughs) So we shot a lot with 50mm lens. So we kept things more contained. You never see the house in its entirety from inside or outside. The only time we see the entire house from the outside is when they have the cake (molded in the shape of the house).

So all the limits worked in your advantage.

It did. But from a practical point of view, it was sort of cruel for the crew. Because the only way to get up the different floors in the house was on the spiral staircase.

I thought it was pretty remarkable how you use sound and space to create the couple's connection/disconnection, as you might say. How much of a sound design went into the film?

Well, a lot of sound was created afterward, based on the recordings that were made after the shoot. I recorded sound myself and also the sound designer. We also used the location sound recordist had recorded during the shoot directly from the scene. I made sure that the sound recordist would capture everything around us that was going on. 

For example, the road works outside the house, which we didn't organize - it just happened on the second day of the shoot and for almost entire shoot. We made sure to record those sound, lots of drilling. For me it was important that there is a real authenticity about the sound that it's not coming from a (sound) library that it's new recordings specific to that locations we were shooting in. 

And that house has a particular way of soaking in sounds from the outside. I was really interested in this and I don't think I exaggerated really in the film. When you are standing in the house, there is a corner you can here a sound, like someone talking, closing a door from outside. It travels back in and you feel like those sound is coming from within the house. As I described the visual structure, being inside out, it was the same with the sound.

EXHIBITION is much more of a visual/aural experience than your previous films. Do you feel that it's a big departure for you artistically as a filmmaker?

It seems like a departure but I feel the other films were just building to that. Each one I become a little braver. I am always interested in pushing myself as a filmmaker and not staying with what I'm comfortable with. One of the main differences that I was really challenging myself with was the idea of a narrative that was less linear. The other two have relatively linear storylines. Whereas Exhibition, I wanted something more fragmented to represent different levels of reality and unreality, dream and memory. Again, increasing interest in sound design. I wanted to push that much further. And the reduction of characters, concentrating on one married couple without an extended family, contained in this...cube.

You've used non actors in your films. Especially artists. Christopher Baker, Viv Albertine, Liam Gillick. Do you know them personally? And how do you approach them being in your films?

I don't always know them personally. In the case of Christopher Baker, he has been my painting teacher for many years. I met him in 2002 and have been painting with him on and off since then. So I knew him even before I started making Unrelated. He can possibly be credited for helping get my creativity back on track. So I know him quite well. I'd watch him during painting lessons and I remember thinking at a certain point, 'I'd like to find a part for him in my film one day'. And Archipelago was obviously the right one.

There is this zen-like quality about him that is infinitely patient and wise.

He is like that in real life. But at the same time he was playing the part of the story. I think it's because I had a privilege of observing him for many years, I was able to fit him in the story. I like sometimes having that 'real-life filtering in to fiction'.

And Liam and Vive. Vive has been a friend of mine for many years. But I neve thought of casting her before. I haven't looked at her before thinking, 'I'd put her in a film' until less than a couple of weeks before shooting. I've been looking at many people. Casting had taken a long time because I wanted to find my couple early on. Because I needed to find them early on to fit into the story and have them get to know each other and get to know the house. But it all happened last minute.

Oh wow.

Possibly that ended up being good. But it was certainly a bit chaotic two weeks before filming and I was getting a little nervous. Liam I didn't know at all. I knew his work as an artist but I didn't know him personally until just before the shoot. So I was very happy to find him.

They both are great and have a great chemistry together. Were there any improvisation involved?

Yes. I mean, it's...I always hesitate to call it improvisation because I always feel that gives a feeling that it has no plan or design or precision at all. How I work is very precise. But as I described working with Christopher, I like the approach of bringing something from real life in to fiction with my actors and non-actors. With Vive and Liam, I sort of sometimes feed them lines and other times they would put things in their own words.

I had a precise plan on paper but I didn't show it to them because I didn't want them to worry about what was going to happen next. Then there was certain point in the shoot where I'd write a scene the night before and then show it to them about half an hour before shooting, just enough of time for them to see the map of what I'm trying to do.

I'm pretty sure you get to be asked a lot about Tom Hiddleston, who is in all of your films and now a big star. How did your working relationship begin?

Well, I met him for Unrelated. The casting director was helping me with that film. I'd seen him in a play at his drama school and was very impressed by him. And when I was looking for an actor to play Oakley, she introduced me to Tom and he was really wonderful in Unrelated obviously. He was much younger then. But we had a great working relationship and I thought of him straight away when I was preparing for Archipelago. He is so good at transforming himself into different characters. It's always irresistible to find him new characters to play. Although I like to work with actors and non-actors alike, Tom is different. He can totally become that character in a way that feels very real.

I mean he is completely different in UNRELATED and ARCHIPELAGO.

Yes. He is channeling something different for each one. And with each one, also in Exhibition, even though it's a much smaller role, he is taking it just as seriously.

Would you work with him again, even though he is a big movie star now doing all these blockbusters?

Yeah, I would. If there is time. (laughs) He is always busy with other films but I have plans for something else I want to do with him.

I'd very much looking forward to that.

The scene where Viv's character fakes fainting during dinner where her friends are talking incessantly about their children made me and my wife laughing out loud in the theater. (we both laugh) We don't have children and my wife really wants to try the fake fainting spell at a boring dinner like that.

Yeah she should do that because I ruined it for myself. Since I put it in the film, I don't think I can get away with that. (Laughs)

Is that from a real life experience?

It's a fantasy. (Laughs)

Childlessness and I wouldn't say the absence of good parenting, maybe a disconnection between different generations are always present in your films. Are they based on your real life concerns or are they external themes you want to explore?

Childlessness is from my own experience. I don't have children and I've grappled with the idea of wanting to have children then trying to come to terms with...you know, been though different processes. So that was something I wanted to express. So when I made Unrelated, it was very much something I was going through at that time. With Archipelago I don't deal with that. I deal with the family in a different way. 

Then I wanted to come back to that theme again with Exhibition but with a different stage in life. The stage where they come to terms with it, possibly. Although as we see, it's something that comes and goes. I think there is still a sadness there. It's something that never goes away. I still feel ambivalent about it. But if I had children, I wouldn't be making films, so I value filmmaking. They are my children in a way.

Excellent. So what's next for you? What are you planning?

It's always difficult to talk about the next film... because I am still constructing it. But I'm gonna go back in time.

Oooh, a period piece?

Well, not too far. To the 80s. And it's also going to be set part in London again. I'm in the period of making city films.

I can't wait.

Read my review of Exhibition here
Read my review of Archipelago here

Scenes from A Marriage

Exhibition (2013) - Hogg

British filmmaker Joanna Hogg, along with Mexico's Fernando Eimbcke is chosen by FSLC's The Emerging Artists Program, part of this year's New York Film Festival. They are playing all 3 feature films by her, the latest being Exhibition. Recently discovered her films and impressed by her talent in portraying human (dis)connections related to specific environment, I was eagerly awaiting her new film. Complex yet subtle, innovative yet basic, it's absolutely one of the best films I've seen at the festival.

A three-story modern house is just as much a character in Joanna Hogg's Exhibition as a married artist couple (played by non actors - Viv Albertine of the punk rock band Slits and artist Liam Gillick) who inhibit it. Equipped with floor to ceiling glass windows, a small lift, a spiral staircase, curtains and dividing screens, the building possesses strong sense of utilitarianism. The childless, middle aged couple have their own work spaces and talk to each other through intercoms whenever they need each other's company. He is a successful architect and she seems to be an artist who is still looking for her voice. At the moment, she is obsessed with recreating Ecstasy of St. Teresa with her own image. For hours on end, she poses almost acrobatically on a stool, looking at herself in the mirror for sketches.

Accompanied by amazing sound design, Hogg often creates and takes away these dividers, figuratively and literally between the couple, inside/outside. The large windows reflect what's inside as much as it shows what's out. We hear everything as she works in her space which is located underneath(!) his space- from heavy footsteps to sliding doors, shutters, sirens outside, street noise, people fighting, construction....

These people are still very much in love and tell each other so (through the intercom). They even take bath together. She fakes fainting so they can be excused from a friend's boring dinner party. They really want to be together and left alone most of the times. Yet they have problems communicating their feelings verbally. Each needs his/her own space too. Just like real life couple, they are complicated people.

They are in the process of selling the building which they have been living for over a decade. Their only condition to a real estate agent (Joanna Hogg regular Tom Hiddleston) in selling is that the building should remain intact and never get demolished. At the party celebrating their leaving, they ironically serve the guests the cake- the mini replica of the building.

Without much of expositional dialog, Hogg paints the complicated picture of relationship brilliantly using other means. The result is exceptional. If her previous films (Unrelated, Archipelago) showcased her as a promising writer/director of subtle emotions and family dynamics, Exhibition proves that she is also very much in tune with cinematic language. The film announces the arrival of major cinematic talent.

Along with her 2 previous films, Exhibition plays part of this years NYFF (The second viewing is on Oct. 8th). Please visit FSLC website for tickets.

Family: Far Away, So Close

Archipelago (2010) - Hogg

In the beginning of the film, there is a hole in the big living room wall above the mantel where a picture frame used to hang. A hired cook notices it. It's a family vacation on a windy isle. It's Mum (Kate Pahy) and two grown up children Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) and Edward (Tom Hiddleston). Dad is absent. He is only available on the phone. Cynthia is resentful about Mum and Ed's passivity on everything, including absence of Dad. Ed has been doing some kind of volunteer work in Africa, but he doesn't really know if he was making right decisions in life. Cynth is the type who'd send away a plate of food she deems not well done in restaurants. She frowns at Ed's sheepishness around the cook. These are all concerns of the privileged. There are muted emotional fireworks. But Joanna Hogg's austere direction and writing, the characters are all too human. Her astutely observed family dynamics and people around them ring true to me. We all have family members like Cynth. Ed's indecisiveness is not uncommon either (he is told so by a family friend and painter, wonderfully played by soft spoken, non-actor Christopher Baker). Acting is superb all around. It's a nice change of pace for me to dig into this somber family drama.