The location, currently a wedding venue, went back to its haunted origins, courtesy of production designer Stéphane Collonge.
During her stay at Soughton Hall , an eighteenth one C Cambrian imposing home , for the production of her latest filmThe Eternal Daughter , director Joanna Hogg saw eery shadows passing under her bedroom door . Her line producer was interrupt by unsound dreams . The sound recordist felt a paw touch them throughtoile de Jouywallpaper . “ We all got a bit frenzied , ” says Hogg , who admittedly does n’t do well with the supernatural . There have been a few tales of Soughton Hall ’s spectral presences over the years , hint at by one of the building ’s directors Sarah Ramsbottom . “ I ’ve see housekeeping staff talk of things being move now and then and something play fast one on them , ” she says , conservative of saying too much for care of scaring off next guest .
Despite all of this , the emplacement was the perfect atmospheric site for the British director ’s speculation into ghost story territory forThe Eternal Daughter , a haunting and expressive portrayal of a daughter reckoning with her human relationship to her female parent . Across Hogg ’s body of employment , reflections on her own biography have been depict through outer space as much as through narrative — for her previous two filmsThe Souvenir Part IandII , for example , the filmmaker and her squad recreate the London apartment that Hogg know in as a moving-picture show educatee for the case of Julie , a semi - fictionalized version of the young Hogg . The Eternal Daughteris another of the manager ’s films that layers fable with personal history , draw on her experiences and retention of her own mother and places that were important to them . “ These are shoes and often they ’re places that I knew well before we made a cinema in them , ” Hogg says , bristling slightly at any use of the discussion “ location ” to describe her celluloid ’s scene . “ The starting point is a position that I require to revisit and so they have a very personal ringing . ”
ForThe Eternal Daughter , the director was n’t attempting to make another replica of a distance she once know but to find somewhere with the ripe sort of architecture and air for the mediaeval tale she want to explore . It was during a “ really crude , ” as Hogg commit it , Google hunting for the most obsessed star sign in the UK that the filmmaker discovered the property . She quickly adds that she did n’t actually want to blast in themosthaunted position she could find—“I’d have been too terrified to do that . ” In the film , Tilda Swinton plays both female parent Rosalind and girl Julie , a twisting , metatextual continuation of both her and her material - spirit daughter Honor Swinton - Byrne ’s function inThe Souvenir Part IandII.For Rosalind and Julie inThe Eternal Daughter , their visit to Soughton Hall ’s fictitious twin , the Moel Famau Hotel , is both a retreat for Rosalind ’s natal day and a chance to revisit what was once her folk home base . In reality and in the film , the building has undergone several redevelopments and is no longer a domestic property , feed into the complexness of Hogg ’s story and the tautness between what the house once meant for Rosalind and the hotel it is now .
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Soughton Hall had never been used as a film or television set before — surprising given its walk out architectural looker . The Georgian family was built in 1720 and was later remodeled , a mission give to the architect Sir Charles Barry who would go on to plan the Houses of Parliament . The possessor at the clip was a stabbing traveler and wanted the home to reflect his pastime in Islamic computer architecture and North African plan . As such , while there is a clear British sensibility in the brilliance of the property , item such as the reddish brick , curved windows , and turrets in the landscape gardens add a compelling internationalism . During the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK , the hall , now a commercial wedding locus , was left deserted . It was an ideal opportunity then , and a silver lining for Ramsbottom , to use the quad for the motion-picture show . “ We ordinarily host 120 or so weddings a year , so film during any other time would be impossible , ” she says . “ Whole rooms were being repurposed , one of the bedroom became a prosthetics room for example . You just could n’t do that with weddings going on . ”
Production graphic designer Stéphane Collonge , who has worked with Hogg on all of her films , excuse that the direct contrast between the old and the new was ultimately essential forThe Eternal Daughter . “ The interesting thing with what we ’ve been doing all these years is that we always start with the material position , ” he says . “ We did n’t just require to go to a scary locating , the genuine topographic point had so much interesting chronicle . It was quite elegant , it was the right size , and it was also a bit of a mishmash of different styles . We really liked that and the way it looked as a very rattling family home , but we were also attracted by that contrast of what it was and how it has now been turned into a bit of a marriage ceremony factory . ” In an former fit as the female parent and daughter arrive at the hotel , Julie notices an uncomplimentary pavilion place in the garden . The stark clash between this feature of the space and the rest of its historical architecture was something Hogg and Collonge had to also reckon with . “ We had the electrical shock that Julie has in the film , which was seeing that marquise and then realizing we were n’t going to be able to get rid of it , ” Hogg says . “ So it had to be part of the story and then I became fascinated with how they ’d quite inexpertly chop a wall away for fit the pavilion on the back . ”
The construction ’s own layered history inspired Hogg ’s story as much as it house it , and the film producer happen herself using more of both the contemporary and diachronic characteristic of the property in the fib . The team base someone hold out locally who had grown up in the prop and shared former photograph of other late resident . “ I was really fascinated by a photograph of one of the owner , ” Hogg adds , “ who was then quite elderly in this room in which everything was at such a big scurf around her , the total diametric to her . Somehow those exposure became a bit of backstory for the kinfolk in the cinema . ”
So much so , Collonge adds , that if you search close you ’ll find those factual photograph and some recreation adorning the hotel walls in the flick . While both Hogg and Collonge are keen for the product design work to go unnoticed—“you’re not meant to see what we ’ve done ” pronounce Collonge — there is a fascinating complexity in how the space became one with the story . “ We apparel quite a hatful in the front part of the house , moderately much everything , because we want to make it more rich in account . At the same time , we would feature how it has been converted with the outlet signaling with green lights and we would enclothe in fire fire extinguisher . And how many hotels do you see where the reception is in the staircase ? We carry the existing stairway and make the composition of article of furniture to house the elbow room keys . The interesting affair about that is that they really loved it and they kept those features . The office has really substantial vestige of the film now , so it ’s now real . ”
With the story incorporate the real history of the distance , and the space now retaining traces of the story , there is a affectionate , holistic flavor to the film . It only emerge for Hogg after on , just how frighteningly liable much of the emplacement had been . In one final uncanny coincidence ( or not ? ) , Hogg uncover the perfect detail connecting it all together . “ I divulge only recently that my own family house had the sametoile de Jouywallpaper when my parents moved in and my mother hated it ! ”
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