Movie Reviews

‘The Eternal Daughter’ Review: Tilda Swinton Shines Twice Over

Published

2 years ago

September 7, 2022

‘The Eternal Daughter’ Review: Tilda Swinton Shines Twice Over

Venice: Joanna Hogg provides followers of “The Memento” a bonus present with this slender however haunted story of a lady making a film about her mom.

At a important second in direction of the top of Joanna Hogg’s magnificent “The Memento Half II” — the second and supposedly remaining portion of her self-portrait of an artist — the director’s younger avatar is overcome by her frustrations with the scholar movie she’s making an attempt to make (itself an autobiographical story referred to as “The Memento”). “I don’t need to see life because it was,” she stresses, “I need to see life as I think about it to be.” As performed by Honor Swinton Byrne, the hurting however headstrong Julie Hart finally finds a technique to do exactly that, a breakthrough that permits Hogg’s self-reflexive memoir of a film to observe go well with.

Happy that she had dedicated the ecstatic reality of her personal story to celluloid in a approach that appeared extra sincere to her than her reminiscences, Hogg apparently determined to see if she may work the identical magic on another person: Her mom (a model of whom had been portrayed by Honor Swinton Byrne’s mom, Tilda Swinton, in “The Memento” and its sequel). Extra particularly, Hogg wished to make a film that will protect her reminiscences of her mom — if not fairly her mom’s reminiscences — by laundering them by means of her personal creativeness. As tends to be the case when somebody tries to seek out their approach out of a home of mirrors, that appears to have confirmed simpler stated than accomplished.

An elegantly slender phantom of a movie that channels a spooky resort’s price of gothic horror tropes into the heartrending story of a lady making an attempt to see her personal ghost, “The Everlasting Daughter” finds Hogg returning to the haunted corridors of her private expertise — and, unexpectedly, to the fictional model of herself that she invented to stroll by means of them. Sure, Julie Hart is again, with Tilda Swinton taking up the position that her daughter originated in “The Memento” (that was set within the ’80s, this within the current day).

However that alone wouldn’t be sufficient of a meta-casting mind-fuck for this deceptively simple film, wherein Hogg interrogates her proper and talent to make a film about her mom by making a film wherein her on-screen avatar interrogates her proper and talent to make a film about her mom. So not solely does Swinton play the middle-aged model of Julie, she additionally reprises her position as Julie’s now-widowed mom, Rosalind, the actress embodying each girls as they retreat for a keep on the fictional Moel Famau resort in Flintshire, Wales.

It’s a worthy conceit for a movie that will not fairly really feel like “The Memento Half III” — it’s much less a totally fleshed out sequel than a spectral reverse shot — however affords a fantastic coda to Hogg’s masterful couplet all the identical (whereas “The Everlasting Daughter” stands by itself, it could doubtless really feel a lot slighter with out some prior familiarity with the story that it so superbly enriches). The place Hogg’s final two motion pictures noticed the filmmaker tracing a model of herself from reminiscence, this one sees her tracing a reminiscence from a model of herself.

Rosalind used to remain on the creaky 300-year-old nation home as a toddler through the battle, and he or she’s returned to it underneath the auspices of assembly up with a distant cousin. However the reality of the matter is that Julie has an ulterior motive: She plans on asking (telling?) her mom to be the topic of her subsequent movie, and presumably gleaning some perception about her character within the course of. However the dialog proves onerous to broach for a number of causes, the primary and most quick of which being that Moel Famau is simply the creepiest place this aspect of a Jack Clayton film about possessed kids.

As if the thick sea of fog weren’t unhealthy sufficient — the mist obscuring most of the refined grace notes and devilish little particulars that enable “The Everlasting Daughter” to resonate lengthy after this deceptively small ghost story has come to an finish — Julie and Rosalind seem like the one visitors within the sprawling property. The disinterested younger evening clerk (Carly Sophia-Davie, all however twirling a bit of gum round her finger) swears that all the different rooms are booked, however Hogg’s lead characters dine by themselves each evening. And at any time when the clerk drives off together with her unseen boyfriend on the finish of every shift, EDM music pounding by means of the subwoofers of his automotive, it looks like Julie and Rosalind have been left there on their lonesome. Effectively, Julie, Rosalind, and Rosalind’s devoted spaniel, Louis (Swinton’s precise canine).

It goes with out saying that Moel Famau is the sort of place the place issues go bump within the evening, however in a movie that owes way more to Joanna Hogg’s oeuvre than it does another style, it stands to purpose that they bump somewhat gently — usually robust sufficient to dislodge an assumption that Julie may need about her mom, however by no means robust sufficient to jolt you out of your seat and even attempt. The actual fact is that the majority of “The Everlasting Daughter” is spent watching Julie put together Rosalind’s drugs, sit throughout from her mom throughout airless dinner, and shuffle across the resort’s empty hallways in the hunt for mysterious sounds. She runs right into a tiny handful of different characters every so often, their encounters unfolding like pleasant, wistful variations of the conversations that Jack Nicholson has with the bartender in “The Shining” (a connection underscored by Hogg’s use of the identical Bela Bartok piece that Kubrick borrowed for his soundtrack, although the 2 movies use totally different elements of it).

And but, regardless of its flagrant lack of incident, “The Everlasting Daughter” pulls you in due to how lucidly Julie’s wanderings mirror her mounting inventive and private crises (and, by extension, Hogg’s personal). Of their virtually subliminal approach, every of the interactions Julie has with Rosalind unmoors her just a little additional. Some return her to a state of everlasting adolescence — the best way that solely being round a mother or father can — whereas others power her to reckon with how little she is aware of about her mom, or how little the ladies of her mom’s technology could even need to be identified. When Rosalind shudders that “The rooms maintain tales,” it immediately feels as if Julie is trespassing in them, and the vitality percolating inside Ed Rutherford’s lush 16mm frames solely provides to that sense of disruption.

Extra than simply an environment friendly little bit of stunt-casting for a film shot on the top of COVID, Swinton’s uncanny twin performances are key to the film’s hushed meditation on how girls may see themselves of their moms (this, even if Swinton so absolutely inhabits each roles that you simply virtually immediately overlook they share a single actress between them). If Julie generally seems like her mom’s doppelgänger, then why does Rosalind additionally appear so distant? Julie turns into quietly fixated on the discrepancies between them, the filmmaker rising pissed off that her efforts to seize her mom’s reminiscence on digicam solely result in her getting misplaced in her personal reflection or being confounded by tips of the sunshine.

Even worse are the uncommon moments when Julie does handle to see issues from her mother’s perspective — or not less than persuade herself that she will be able to — as she will be able to’t shake the sensation that Rosalind is upset by her determination to not develop into a mom herself. Does Rosalind see that as a type of rejection, and in that case, wouldn’t it be one thing that Julie (or Hogg) may need to embody in a film that can inevitably come to supplant her precise reminiscences of her mom? And, if it’s true that Julie thinks of her movies as her kids, what kind of phantasmagorical crossing of the streams may occur if she made one concerning the girl who gave start to her?

These questions (along with a number of others) tangle round one another in such delicate style over the course of “The Everlasting Daughter” that it’s onerous to arrange your self for the second when Hogg immediately yanks the film tight on either side and knots all of it collectively in a single stroke. The literal that means of that last-minute twist — compulsory for any movie that borrows a lot from “The Flip of the Screw” and its ilk — couldn’t be any clearer, however its implications resonate with the identical layered complexity of the ultimate shot from “The Memento Half II,” and significantly extra unease. If Julie’s movies actually are her kids, maybe dedicating this one to Rosalind could be sufficient to make her really feel like a grandmother finally.

Grade B+

“The Everlasting Daughter” premiered on the 2022 Venice Movie Pageant. A24 will launch it both later this yr or in 2023.

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Movie Reviews

LOVE LIES BLEEDING Review

Published

4 hours ago

January 6, 2025

Press Room

LOVE LIES BLEEDING is a modern, vicious film noir. A lesbian woman named Lou is estranged from her vicious father Lou Sr. yet manages a decrepit gym he owns in their desert town. Jackie, a female drifter, arrives in town and engages in back-seat, adulterous sex with JJ, who’s married to Lou’s sister, Beth. Lou is instantly attracted to her when she flexes her muscles. The two women soon begin a tawdry sexual relationship.Beth winds up in a hospital when JJ viciously beats her offscreen. Jackie has been abusing steroids to build muscle. She flies into a murderous rage and brutally kills JJ. A string of double-crosses explodes. Can Lou bring down her father and his illicit crime machine? Is Jackie a serious love interest or a con artist?

LOVE LIES BLEEDING is a modern-day, highly immoral, sleazy take on the film noir genre. It features a graphic lesbian relationship, numerous scenes of graphic violence, substance abuse, and abundant foul language. The movie has a twist-filled script, fast pacing and gritty performances, but it repulsed the vast majority of moviegoers at the box office.

(PaPaPa, HoHoHo, LLL, VVV, SSS, NN, AA, DD, MMM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Vicious, promiscuous, totally immoral movie filled with violence and sex, especially lesbian sex;

Foul Language:

At least 78 obscenities (including 65 “f” words), three strong profanities using Jesus Christ and a gross scene where a woman has to unclog a clogged toilet;

Violence:

Numerous people are shot in graphically bloody fashion with sickening wounds and shocking sound effects, woman shoots another woman in the head and causes blood to splatter all over the camera, woman beats a man to death, woman breaks that man’s jawbone wide open as she slams his head repeatedly into a table, abused wife is hospitalized by a particularly brutal yet offscreen beating that leaves her face severely bruised and swollen, another character tortures this woman by pressing hard against her facial injuries, woman shoots another man in a shootout then shoves the barrel of her gun into his mouth, takes the gun back out but smashes the gun into his face to kill him, and a woman is shown waking up from a seemingly fatal gunshot wound, but another woman chokes her to death and dumps her body in the desert;

Sex:

Graphic lesbian sex scenes, particularly showing oral sex, the sex is shown promiscuously on a one-night stand, and later another lesbian blackmails one of the lead lesbians into having relations with her (though this is only implied and discussed, not shown), movie opens with a man having forceful, adulterous sex with a woman from behind in the back of a car, and a lesbian sucks on her girlfriend’s toe;

Nudity:

Several lesbian sex scenes feature female breasts and buttocks but no genitals, another lesbian woman is shown standing with full rear nudity after an implied sex scene, and shirtless men are seen working out in several scenes;

Alcohol Use:

Adults frequently drink alcohol, with one scene showing a woman drunk;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

A woman smokes cigarettes frequently, a female bodybuilder severely abuses steroids throughout, leading to violent outbursts and her vomiting onstage in front of a crowd, and the steroid injections are shown in a sensuous fashion;

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Lying, double-crosses, deception rampant throughout, with a dehumanizing use of violence.

LOVE LIES BLEEDING is a modern-day, highly immoral, sleazy take on the film noir genre that centers on a graphic lesbian relationship, numerous scenes of graphic violence and an abundance of foul language. LOVE LIES BLEEDING has a twist-filled script, fast pacing and gritty performances, but should not be viewed by anyone.

The story centers upon a lesbian woman named Lou (Kristen Stewart), who is estranged from her vicious father Lou Sr. (Ed Harris) yet works managing a decrepit gym he owns in their desert town. Meanwhile, a female drifter named Jackie (Katy O’Brien) arrives in town and immediately engages in back-seat, adulterous sex with JJ (Dave Franco), who’s married to Lou’s sister Beth (Jena Malone).

The backseat liaison results in a job for Jackie at a gun range on the edge of town owned by Lou Jr. She’s just saving up money to finish a trip to Las Vegas for a women’s bodybuilding championship, and when she flexes her massive muscles, Lou is instantly attracted to her.

The two soon engage in a tawdry sexual relationship, but Lou’s happiness is abruptly halted when Beth winds up in a hospital after a vicious (offscreen) beating at the hands of JJ. Lou Sr. wants to keep it all in the family rather than report JJ to the police, which angers Lou greatly.

Jackie has been abusing steroids in order to build muscle for her upcoming competition, and flies into a murderous rage that results in her brutally killing JJ. When Lou and Jackie dump his body in an enormous pit in the desert outside of town, a string of double-crosses explodes as Lou Sr. is determined to find out who killed JJ and federal agents start asking Lou lots of questions about his potentially criminal enterprises.

Can Lou manage to bring her father and his illicit crime machine down? Is Jackie a serious love interest or a con artist using her for her own ends?

LOVE LIES BLEEDING has excellent performances from all of its cast, who bring a wide array of seedy characters to vivid life. Also, Director/Co-writer Rose Glass keeps the twists coming fast and furious throughout the movie’s bonkers second half.

Despite the technical skill with which it’s made, LOVE LIES BLEEDING is a movie that has literally no characters to support and no sense of legal justice – just brutal vigilante revenge meted out several times over. Even Lou becomes utterly reprehensible and heartless by the end, and the movie’s entire mood is demoralizing and dehumanizing.

Packed with graphic violence, sex and nudity and an abundance of foul language, LOVE LIES BLEEDING is utterly distasteful and a must to avoid for viewers of all ages.

Movie Reviews

Love Child (2024) Movie Review & Ending Explained: Can Love and Sacrifice Keep Ayla and Paolo’s Family Together?

Published

12 hours ago

January 6, 2025

Press Room

Love Child (2024) Movie Review & Ending Explained: Can Love and Sacrifice Keep Ayla and Paolo’s Family Together?

Rom Coms, the ones that match the endearing and intelligent with equal fluency, have a scintillating flavor. The book of tricks to make a romcom sing and soar may have admittedly gone jaded and dog-eared. The crises of couples, dilemmas, and anxieties they have to battle have undergone dramatic changes in a fast-evolving world. Expectations vary with the decades, even as gendered rules haven’t dented much.

The urge to steal a leaf or two from every standard template Hollywood romcom is immanent in any new derivation. It becomes a constant tussle, hence, for a new film in similar spaces to eke out freshness and smarts. Jonathan Jurilla’s directorial “Love Child” (2024) has little to add or say anything genuinely sparkling. It’s a weary distillation of parental exhaustion and re-alignment, too silly to pass off what it views as clever self-reflexive remarks.

There are basic cardinal rules a romcom must ensure is upheld. Conflicts should ideally resonate across a demographic; humor needs to exist in spades. A helping of self-awareness goes a long way in establishing a winking playfulness. The best rom-coms sail through these assumptions with lightness and spryness.

Love Child (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:

Ayla and Paolo’s Journey of Love, Sacrifice, and Resilience

Ayla (Jane Oineza) and Paolo (RK Bagatsing) are young parents. Incidentally, the actors themselves are a couple in real life, who call the film a “free trial” to parenthood. Ayla and Paolo have been exultant about becoming parents but what awaits them is a whole lot of instability, fraught periods of testing faith in each other to weather the hardships of raising their child, Kali (John Tyrron Ramos) who is diagnosed with autism. It’s this diagnosis that opens the film and sends their lives into a tailspin. The two have fought with their families on several counts to realize their togetherness. Dreams have also been put on hold. Paolo is a filmmaker who desires to make it big but naturally meets resistance from his father, from whom he has cut loose.

They arrive in the Philippines to put up at the house that Ayla’s aunt has offered. They don’t have to worry about rent, an exponential anxiety hence taken care of. The first thing they get done is to enroll Kali at a school for children with support needs. They hope he can be addressed with due attention and be given proper time, nourished in a safe, loving, and understanding community.

How Far Will Ayla and Paolo Go to Secure a Future for Their Son?

Of course, things don’t go as smoothly. The money to raise the child is immense, formidable, and persistent. It’s no small task. To exacerbate matters, the couple has no savings to lean on. Ayla has just a small income from a virtual assistant job and Paolo has barely any gigs to draw a livelihood from in the Philippines.

At home back in Australia, opportunities were, at least, higher. Sources of supporting themselves stand a chance. The couple start a coffee cart as an added source of income. Even that isn’t enough. Customers are few. To run the cart is its own demanding affair that strains their purses more than they expected it to.

One night, Kali falls terribly sick. His parents rush him to the hospital, where medical expenses surge. Where will the couple find the money to foot the bill? They are at wit’s end. Pao assures Ayla not to worry. He’ll dredge out a way. However, when he is away scavenging for a source, Ayla already turns to her mother who lends her the needed money. He is angry with her because Ayla’s mother has been refusing to recognize Kali as her grandson. She tells him, if they waited longer, they’d be staring at an added day of hospital expenses.

Love Child (2024) Movie Ending Explained:

Do Ayla and Paolo find a way of raising their child?

Ayla and Paolo are compelled to employ specialized teachers and attendants for Kali. The cost of living becomes exceedingly high. How can they afford it? Ultimately, they edge toward the pained but necessary realization that they have to live apart at least for a while. If that’s the only way they can build a decent future for Kali, they can’t ignore it. What’s significant and decisive is both Ayla and Paolo are wholly committed to being there for Kali, no matter what it takes, as well as underscoring the need to go out and chase their individual aspirations.

Yes, she must pursue her dream of being a lawyer. The climax is a wistful one, with Paolo leaving for Australia where he would brush aside his bruised ego and accept his father’s job offer. He takes the marks of his wife and child, remnants of them he’d carry with him as he moves into an uncertain, yet hope-tinged future in Australia. They part ways with a promise of return. They know he’ll be back when the time is right and resources have accrued enough to carve for them a comfortable life together.

Love Child (2024) Movie Review:

“Love Child” lacks a fundamental, driving vitality and energy. It is only inconsistently curious and sporadic in its plunges into human indecision and the fear of failure. What is that projection we induce when we feel we are turning into reflections of our parents, a reality most horrific and to skirt clear? To encounter such a realization is depressing and upsetting.

The central pair of the film have to negotiate and move past reservations and a bundle of fears popping up. They are opposed to seeking the help of their parents, who have never sided with them in big decisions, but they also understand the need for a bigger family their child ought to have. Having just his parents wouldn’t suffice for Kali to rely on. For his sake, the parents have to look past their grudges and learn to forgive and let go of ill will.