Here's another languid movie where Tilda Swinton can't get any sleep because of sudden noises and nothing much ever happens. I swear, I did not choose it as the follow up to Memoria on purpose.
This time around it's a ghost story, complete with a reedy retro horror soundtrack and a near-empty hotel set adrift among mist-covered woods; It's a miscalculation, and I'm going to spoil something in the honest belief that it will improve your chances of enjoying this: this is not a ghost story*. It spends a lot of its running time trying to convince you that it is, but most of it is smoke and mirrors deployed not to convince the protagonist that something phantasmagorical is happening, but to convince you, the viewer. It all comes to nothing.
The story follows Julie Hart (Tilda Swinton) and her mother Rosalind (Tilda Swinton), who go to a large hotel in the middle of nowhere for a few days to celebrate Rosalind's birthday along with their dog Louis (Louis). Julie is a filmmaker, and she's trying to write a movie about her mom but is unsure how to approach it - critically, she's intimidated by even the prospect of making it. Her mom, meanwhile, reveals that the hotel used to be owned by her family; A lot of their conversations circle around the memories each room they visit awaken in her.
Their tête-à-têtes are the heart of the movie, and have a fair bit of psychological heft. They get along well enough, but there's a little bit more going on under their extremely polite exchanges, heavy with expectations and other undercurrents. It's all gentle, well observed and obviously very personal to writer/director Joanna Hogg, although the dialog scenes are hurt by the blunt cutting scheme made necessary by having a single actress play two parts and no money to liven things up with CGI trickery. A lot of the lines are a little too didactic as well; it kind of makes sense once what's going on is explained, but it makes some of these scenes a little too stilted.
Not that much of the movie is dedicated to their conversations. Most of the rest is all about that pointless misdirection in a gothic key: atmospheric torch-illuminated jaunts that don't ever really develop a sense of mystery or menace, a missing dog scare, bumps in the night.
There's a late-game twist that's pretty easy to see coming, but it at least explains Julie's weird mannerisms during the movie in an affecting way. Unfortunately, by then the film has spent too much time and energy into putting on genre drag that was never really effective in the first place. The framing displaces the lovely relationship drama that should have been at the center, leaving behind an overall feeling of disappointment.
*: Except in a very loose, metaphorical way - one that shortchanges any genre considerations.
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