The Eternal Daughter

"Yes.. mm hmm.. it was this very room. Was it this room, mum? Hmmm..... I remember. Yes. This was the room. Yes. I have a memory! Of this room.... This room, mummy? Mm hmm. Yes. I believe it was this room. I remember, the memory....in this room." Imagine Tilda Swinton and latex aged Tilda Swinton having variations of the above conversation, in various rooms of some funky old British looking hotel, for 96 minutes. Oh, and I see dead people- literally see them coming from the FIRST scene. I would possibly be a bit more forgiving of this film if it were a first time director, but it isn't. There is nothing, and I do mean NOTHING tra-la-la! Redeemable about this. I felt my intelligence insulted by its pretension. I never write reviews, but this is one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life, and I've seen a lot more than your average person. Dreadful.

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Imagine "The Sixth Sense" but Bruce Willis goes on to handshake and have 2-way conversations with real people. This is exactly the movie. Also Nothing happens in it's entire runtime. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. How can a movie that has no story whatsoever go on to have 95% Rotten Tomatoes score is beyond my understanding. No wonder they are called "pretentious reviewers". It even ended on many year end lists. And what a wastes potential man! They had a perfect gothic horror setting, a haunting background score and a brilliant actor like Tilda Swinton. But in the end they went for Shallow Nothingness.

I am shocked to see the negativity in so many of these reviews - personally, the movie blew me away and I thought it was quite fabulous. It is an understated story portraying entirely one woman's psychological and emotional state at a particular point in her life. All of the scenery, the direction, the pace, the objects, the marvellous cinematography perfectly came together as a crystallized whole. The entire atmosphere of the movie can be thought of as an externalization of the protagonist's mind, her character traits, and her feeling of 'lowkey' entrapment. There's not much by way of a plot, and there's not a second where the movie speeds up - it moves at its own languid, disquieting pace from start to finish. Much is left unsaid, unexplained - there is little solid structure to latch onto, so the only way to watch this movie is to surrender to Swinton's terrific + intelligent performance and let the scenes speak for themselves. (Oh, and I thought the 'twist' was brilliant - it really elevated the entire movie for me.)

Yeah its about grief and all. But honestly, this was painful and makes you think to use your time more wisely. Also the double role gives it right away that she checks in alone- no surprise or plotwist there. At least they could have made the dialogues more intriguing. Nope- u don't get much out of those either. The intentional faded colors, makes you wanna correct the contrast constantly, its so bleek the whole time. It's definitely the worst movie i have seen with swinton in it. Normally i consider her as a guarantee of good films cause she choses her roles wisely. Don't know what drove her to do this project???

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source: The Eternal Daughter