While Tilda Swinton plays dual roles as Julie and Rosalind in Joanna Hogg’s “The Eternal Daughter,” she joked about the true star of the haunting drama: her dog, Louis.
“He was not only a very good boy, but he had the time of his life,” Swinton said.
At the Variety Studio presented by King’s Hawaiian at TIFF, Swinton and Hogg spoke with Variety Senior Entertainment Writer Angelique Jackson about exploring mother-daughter relationships with the A24 film, which the lifelong friends filmed during the pandemic, following 2019’s “The Souvenir.”
Hogg, whose mother died unexpectedly while “The Eternal Daughter” was being edited, noted the project’s “cathartic effect” on her following the sudden loss. “I hope when audiences see this film, that it will have some kind of cathartic effect,” Hogg said.
“Something that the film very much looks at, is the pain of thinking of your mother unhappy,” Swinton added. “And this feeling that we must solve our mother’s unhappiness, and the incapacity to do that.”
During the interview, Swinton and Hogg got candid about what their late mothers (Swinton’s mother died in 2012) would think of the film.
“I can imagine certain noises my mother would’ve made while she was alive,” Swinton said.
She continued, “I speak as a mother, a mother is not as hard on her child as we are on ourselves — and that’s a shame. It’s a shame that we are so tough on ourselves. So, I think our mothers would be moved to see how tough we are on ourselves, and hope we would forgive ourselves.”
Watch the full conversation above.
