New York Film Festival 2019

[Chris Knipp]

JOANNA HOGG: THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER (2022)


TILDA SWINTON IN THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER

A trip north

The Eternal Daughter may be categorized as a film of horror or the supernatural, but devotees of either will doubtless be disappointed. Numerous critics describe it as "a distinctly minor work" by the director, whose 2019 The Souvenir brought her to wide attention, and to mine. It's worth going back and watching all her three earlier features, Unrelated, Archipelago and Exhibition: they're not fun watches, but the unfun-ness is distinctly her own, uppermiddleclass British constraints and torments that will seem to grow out of, not lead into, the autobiographical film student with the unfortunate posh boyfriend of The Souvenir. The underimpressed critics also say The Eternal Daughter, which serves as a sequel to The Souvenir II, the end of a trilogy, that it is "slooow."

Well, The Eternal Daughter is unique, and while I'd agree it has its longeurs, and is almost Beckettian in its uneventfulness. It's also subtle and beautiful, and the performance at the center of it by Tilda Swinton as both Julie Hart, a filmmaker, and Rosalind Hart, her mother, whom the hyper-attentive Julie takes to a big old, apparently empty hotel for her birthday, is remarkable. The double performance is not just a stunt. It's also a brilliant idea central to the film's themes and ideas, which magnify and unfold over time like the old Japanese paper flowers that grew when you dipped them in water. And all this isn't just cleverness. It serves to deliver hard emotional honesty that characterizes Hogg's best moments in the other films. After the slow passages, as I watched, the emotion grew, and at the end I was devastated with a still unfolding sense of sorrow too deep for tears.

Hogg makes much use of the horror vibe and genre ticks throughout - a pale face in a window; knocks in the night; Rosalind's setter Louis (the canine companion an important character in many a family), brought along, disappearing and then popping up back in the room; the odd, unfriendly "staff;" the confounding corridors and rooms; the fog outside - and all these events and things allow for the general feeling we have that something strange is going on. Many will doubtless guess the film's secret early on. That's unimportant. It's all in the very distinctive nuance of the film and the interchanges between Julie and Rosalind. It's very important that until the end, a two-shot doesn't occur. You see Julie saying something, then you see - or will you see? You never know - Rosalind. And yes, you're very aware that both are Tilda Swinton in two different sorts of drag. The Rosalind drag includes peculiarly subtle aging makeup. She's not made to look very old. (A very old woman is seen toward the end, in a kind of coda and subtly spooky jolt.) You're marveling at the costumer's and makeup artist's art and the acting, but you're very aware that you're watching Tilda Swinton.

And all this is kind of creepy, if not what you'd call "horrible." Or maybe it is; maybe you can anticipate a Hitchcockian shock coming. It's not like that. It's more like the air goes out of the tire. (Or tyre.) The more overt horror-supernatural vibe comes from the great aristocratic house in Wales that Julie and Rosalind are staying at. It is a place, then in private hands, where Rosalind, as a young girl, was sent with other family members to escape the bombing during the War. But Julie doesn't know much about this. She has devoted much of her life to caring about and loving her mother - she has a husband, but no children - but her mother remains largely a mystery to her. Other later visits to the house turn out to have occurred later, and things happened, not happy memories, that Julie didn't know about. The place is beautiful, in a mournful way. The accoutrements of the rooms, even the keys at the front desk, are handsome. the ornate, formal landscaping outside, shrouded often in cinematic fog, is beautiful in its layers of green. The exterior shots look like subtle color lithographs.

The place isn't particularly friendly. Julie and Rosalind are greeted by a grumpy receptionist (Carly-Sophia Davies), who also reappears as the waitress at the dining room (and there are only four dishes on the menu). Is Harold Pinter an influence? This is in some ways like a magnificently visually expanded play, a chamber drama, a drama in the head. A warmer character is a groundskeeper (Joseph Mydell) who talks to Julie a few times and comforts and shares an understanding of loss. He says his wife died a year ago.

Julie is here to celebrate Rosalind's birthday - or is she? The birthday celebration turns out to be grotesque and sad, family happiness gone wrong, though a a bottle of champagne is uncorked and poured from and a birthday cake is brought in. Julie chooses to bring it in herself. But whenever Julie and Rosalind are seated talking together at meals, Julie surreptitiously sets her smartphone out to record the conversation. Early on she's said she's here to work, on a new film presumably, and she goes to a special place to do so, but she can't sleep, she's uncomfortable, and she goes day after day without getting any work done. The other use of the smartphone is to try to talk to her husband. This she has to do out in front of the hotel pacing about near a hedge trying to get reception, which isn't good. And the wi-fi is patchy in the building as well.

These descriptions sound ordinary enough. But in Joanna Hogg's skilled hands and the meticulous, complicated interchanges of Tilda and Tilda, they resonate with meanings you go on pondering long after the film is over. The heart of the matter is the confrontation of lives and family relationships, the permanent, difficult, mysterious, inescapable ones. The daughter is "eternal" because filial relationships never end. Imagine making a movie about your mother and its turning out to be a sort of horror film. Others would make a story that's joyous and celebratory. But where is the truth? I remember the priest who Malraux talks about in his Anti-Memoirs who, questioned on what he had learned about people from thirty years of hearing confession, gave two ideas; there is no such thing as a grownup person; and people are much less happy than they appear. But the scenes we have watched have been an expiation. And the end Julie has come thorough and is typing away on her laptop: the new film has come to her. This one.

If any of this sounds intriguing, you are urged to see The Eternal Daughter. It's a marvelous film, a study of grief, memory and family relationships that cuts to the bone. A minor work? Remember the little Fragonard painting in the Wallace Collection in The Souvenir. That whole film grows out of it.

The Eternal Daughter, 96 mins., debuted Sept. 6, 2022 at Venice, showing at nine or more other international festivals, including Toronto, Zurich, London, New York (Main Slate), Vienna, Seville, AFI, Thessaloniki and Marrakech. Limited US theatrical release and on itnernet Dec. 2, 2022. Metacritic rating: 79%.

[Chris Knipp]

DANIEL MINAHAN: ON SWIFT HORSES (2024)

A feast that leeaves one a little hungry

This glamorous, bold, and almost-wonderful novel adaptation blends dual romance with film noir. One of the most favorable reviews (Hollywood Reporter)) starts with saying they don't make movies like this any more. And this is one way of approaching the experience of watching it. You imagine entering a dark movie house, sitting through a couple of hours of drama, color, glamour, emotion. And then you walk out into the afternoon feeling hung-over, and vaguely let down.

The music, the photography, the scenery, the five main actors are enough to sweep you away. But something goes a little wrong. Not too much, because those rewards keep paying off. The trouble is these two storylines. This is a bold mainstream gay movie that takes place at a time when it wasn't safe to be gay. This is a movie you couldn't make till Brokeback Mountain came along twenty years ago. But On Swift Horses throws that possibility away. It catches the physicality of homosexuality but not the emotion.

Of course you can't really say they don't make them like this anymore, because they never made glamorous starry stories where beautiful main characters had secret, intense gay lives. That did not happen.

There are five main characters. There are two brothers and a woman. She marries one of the brothers, who is back from the Korean war. The other, a wild, mysterious type the woman is plainly attracted to, wanders off, teasing her and his brother with a promise of coming back to share there new life in California. She goes on to have a secret lesbian affair and the wayward brother acquires a male latin lover. They have another secret: he gambles and she plays the horses. He just gets into a lot of danger, but she plays the game very, very well. She begins working at a lunchroom heavily patronized by racetrack insiders with big mouths, and she takes notes, which pays off, big time.

The two brothers are Lee, played by Will Poulter, and Julius, played by Jacob Elordi. The lady is Muriel: that's Daisy Edgar Jones, who one critic claims is a ringer for Elizabeth Taylor. She doesn't have Liz's lush beauty, or her presence and acting skill, but she is very good and is done up to look nice. She looks in the mirror and likes what she sees. These are great roles for all three. Will Poulter has never looked so sexy, or so astonishingly elegant. When he is sitting on the floor, desolated by what he has learned about Muriel, his slacks and shirt are just so. His brown suede shoes and shining white socks make you long for a return to Fifties men's styles. (This is a great looking mnovie.). Did men have bleach-blushed hair back then? Never mind: Will was meant to wear that pompadour and to speak in that American accent. The long, tall, dark, riply-chested Elordi always looks good, but here there is a mixture of risk and sadness that is truly touching. When Diego Calva told old Variety that he and Jacob Elordi have some "pretty hot scenes" he wasn't exaggerating.

The trouble is that once Julius (I never quite bought into that name) goes off on his own, the movie splits (desite the literary device of their secret correspondence) into two plotlines, his and Muriel's. It's quite fun in the first third of the movie when he is gambling, then working in a casino, while she is sneaking off all dolled up to win at the racetrack. The racetracks themselves are filmed to look bright and stylish. In Vegas Julius meets Henry, played by Diego Calva (of Narcos: Mexico and Babylon). Henry goes for Julius in a big way and Julius responds completely. In fact he is the one who wants to stay and have Henry as his anchor, a surprise coming from this rakish actor. The note Henry eventually leaves when he runs off is "Couldn't wait."

Meanwhile Muriel is having a fun time of her own, namely Sandra (Sasha Calle). (I should have known about Sasha Calle but I just didn't remember her from The Flash.). It all starts with a jar of olives. If a girl teaches a girl how to eat an olive ("It has a pit."), well, the rest just follows, doesn't it? There is somthing feisty and self-contained in Sasha Calle that sets off Daisy Edgar-Jones' doe-eyed innocence-in-love look. (Tough at the racetrack, she's a softie at the girl-love.)

These two secret lovers, Calva and Calle, are fine. I'd like to try Sasha Calle's olives, and maybe her eggs too. It's good that Diego Calva has an authentically heavy Mexican accent, even if it's hard to understand at times. The trouble is that the filmmakers don't manage well the part in the end when Shannon Pufahl's 2019 source novel teasingly almost-reunites Julius and Muriel.

Even this soft failure is almost covered up by an unsually pleasing, lush, sonorous score so warm and comforting it makes you more than willing to sit through the credits to the end. The composer Mark Orton is a master at putting classical-quality music to cinematic use. This is not a film that drags. It keeps the attention by the eventually unsatisfying flips from Muriel-world to Julius-world, with the transitions sliding seamlessly from Daisy in bed with her lover to Jacob in bed with his, and back again, or so it seems.

On Swift Horses is a beautiful movie and one that really ought to be seen on a big screen. The sixth glamorous star is the director of photography, Luc Montpellier. This is a great looking film that's fun to watch, a treat for queer audiences, and a fine showpiece for its actors that isn't doing very well with the critics and with this timing hasn't got much chance at the Oscars, but see it anyway; there's not much out there to see as good as this right now.

On Swift Horses, 117 mins., debuted at Toronto Sept. 2024, showing also at SXSW , Sonoma, Martha's Vinyard, Phoenix, Miami and a handful of other US festivals, and it opens theatrically in the US by Sony Pictures Classics on Apr. 25, 2025. Metacritic rating: 66%.


WILL AND DAISY IN ON SWIFT HORSES. BUT THIS CLIP CUTS OFF HIS SHOES AND SOCKS!

[Chris Knipp]

DÉSIRÉ MIA IN ABSOLUTE DOMINION

LEXI ALEXANDER: ABSOLUTE DOMINION (2025)

TRAILER

Abs dom

This tale of a contest to end a future state of global religous conflict draws on Star Wars and perhaps The Hunger Games and has some nice ideas and a cool new young star. With a director who is part Palestinian, we get some conversation in Aabic and more awareness of other languages and cultures than usual for an American film, and that's a good thing. Isn't it nice also to think world conflict might be resolved with a single hand-to-hand combat encounter? This is billed as "a radical new form of diplomacy."

It's the future and many of the world's major cities have been trashed in what has become a global holy war, multiple religions fighting for dominance. A jokey, F-word-talking Patton Oswalt character called Fix Huntley, talking on a cheap camera in a van somehow gets worldwide attention when he proposes a martial arts competition, in which the winner's religion will become the dominant one, to resolve this chaos. A competition Fix Huntley proposes, known as The Battle of Absolute Dominion, will be held and the winner's religion will be the dominant one.

Sagan Bruno (newcomer Désiré Mia) emerges as the unknown top dog in the tournament. If he indeed wins, his religion will be the dominant one. He is 6'3", 190 lbs., has a reach of 80", fights "transvait" style, and easily wins his 12 prelims for qualifiers who are unranked, each of which we rapidly glimpse. He comes from IHS, the Institute of Humanism and Science, so, not a religion at all.

Star Désiré Mia is a tall, loose-limbed fashion model with a German mother and an Ivorian father. He is a 25-year-old social media creator with 220,000 Instagram followers whose parents wish he had finished school. What works about him is that, apart from the smooth, lithe way he fights, with those looks it makes sense when it emerges that Sagan was genetically engineered from donors with this kind of competition in mind. Sagan reportedy has an IQ of 180 and speaks eight languages. He doesn't have to write down phone numbers he needs to remember, just glance at them. His fighting style is balletic: he seems more like a dancer than pugilist and all the "pro" fighters who are matched with him look clunky by comparison, like they'e trying too hard. There is a calm, pleasant air about him that is appealing, perhaps a little otherworldly.

As the movie gets talkier, one of the genetic donors comes in, Sagan's scientist "mother" Satara (Oluniké Adeliyi), a Rhodes Scholar and former world champion gymnast who's also a srhink. This emerges in a chat between the tall, bearded coach and the short female security specialist assigned to Sagan. The father is there too and the picture develops these relationships so that despite being genetically modified, Sagan is loving and loved, like anybody else. The screenplay delves interestingly into a subplot about maintaining security for Sagan in this violent, hostile world, which becomes much riskier after he emerges as a potential winner.

Beside the jokey Patton Oswalt character, the frontal figure for the world's communication is also comedic, a very campy one with heavy eye makeup, a dark five-o'clock-shadow beard, pink hair, a succession of wild outfits, and talk that is in the "Miss Thing" style.

They hash over the fact that Sagan's toughest opponent so far in the Shalom Stadium prelims, a Dari (perhaps meaning Zoroastrian) person, wants to fight to the death even when pinned, and Sagan won't kill him. He eventually "taps out," and competition officials want to figure out by studying tapes how Sagan accomplished this.

Another opponent is a giant Sumo type Sagan beats by climbing around on him like an acrobat. He concludes: "when your opponent is a bull, be a muleta. If he is a muleta, be a bull. Just don't be a matador." Certainly an original metaphor.

When in the midst of finally fighting his first official top-50 opponent, Sagan appears to produce a weapon, and proceedings are halted. It's a misunderstanding, which is frequent with Sagan because his special skills are so unexpected. Eventuallly he becomes justified and recognized and goes on to win a decisive victory when badly injured. But the drama of this is lessened because he doesn't seem to feel the pain. The other combatants have by now begun to see him as a "prophet" because everyone now knows that he hears God talking to him, a development that changes his status as the "athiest" fighter, though this interesting development isn't fully resolved.

This is a different, intelligent kind of martial arts picture even if it fall short of top ranking in both the intellectual and the martial arts categories and doesn't quite achieve the powerful and suspenseful finale the genre demands. Deesiré Mia is an interesting new entry into the martial arts movie roster. At one point it appears that he speaks fluent Portuguese. On an Instagram self-interview he says he has no hidden talents but in this movie he already reveals abilities that are unusual, so that statement seems over-modest.

Other important cast members, somewhat hard to pin to character names, are Alex Winter (Bill and Ted Face the Music), Julie Ann Emery (Preacher), June Carryl (Helstrom), Oluniké Adeliyi (The Expanse), Regan Gomez (Queen Sugar) and Andy Allo (Upload). Also included are Andy Allo, Mario D’Leon, Alex Winter, Junes Zahdi, Alok Vaid-Menon, and John Siciliano. Philip Tan, who’s had a long stunt career that includes work in Inception and Minority Report, oversaw fight choreography, which is not too shabby. According to a Las Vegas Review Journal piece from earlier this month, as a setting the filmmakers used a closed casino called Terrible’s in a small town in Nevada, and a lot of the tournament action appears to be at a hotel. The film makes good use of its very minimal production design with music, sound effects, and a lively cast. People of color are well represented.

During post-production Netflix and Blumhouse departed from the project ( Variety reported), but it was picked up for US and internatonal distribution by Giant Pictures and is available online in the US now.

Director and writer Lexi Alexander is a German-Palestinian filmmaker and martial artist who is known for her work on films such as Johnny Flynton (2002), Green Street Hooligans (2005), Punisher: War Zone (2008) and Lifted (2010).

Absolute Dominion, 100 mins., opens in theaters and online starting May 9, 2025.