It’s time we talk about The Lost Daughter. Even though the Oscars are talking about it (and maybe in some fake, artificial way, that’s all we can ask for), it doesn’t seem like it’s a favorite movie to talk about.
Truthfully, I first thought that this movie would be unrelatable. Characters with a strong maternal spirit are not a thing for me, let alone for much of the population that doesn’t want kids or doesn’t carry children to birth. With a title like The Lost Daughter, directed by a woman and with a main cast consisting mostly of women, the perception of ultra-femininity (not meaning that it surrounds the interests of women through the lens of heteronormativity, but that it’s about a story about women) might ward off those who cannot relate. Sure, at the basis of interested viewers would be fans of Elena Ferrante (the author of the original material source), older mothers, and people who love devastating dramas. But thanks to the alignment of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s first directorial project and the memorable performances by Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, and Dakota Johnson, The Lost Daughter has a special way of toppling its seeming genre. The thing about The Lost Daughter is that it is indeed unabashedly feminine, and compels the audience to listen to a voice telling us uncomfortable truths.
Colman is Leda, an English professor who travels alone to a tourist beach in Greece. Presumably she’s on vacation, but from the moment she steps into town, the tension is so taut on her face and body language that it’s hard to believe that she can physically relax. As such, she’s ready to fight a large family at the beach: Callie (Dagmara Domińczyk) asks if Leda can relocate to a different lounging chair so that their family could stay together. Leda firmly says no, despite an unbelieving glare from Callie and the rest of the adults. Did Leda have a reason? The sun seemed to distribute an equal amount of attention through the sands. The family was so loud and obnoxious that I’d voluntarily move to the other side of the beach. But Leda, who does not seem like a woman who compromises, reveals an engrained character trait that has driven into choices that haunt her.
We figure out Leda’s psyche through the present and past: she wordlessly stares as Callie’s sister Nina (Dakota Johnson) and her three-year-old daughter Elena cavort in the water in a way that might have someone pre-emptively call an Amber alert. In flashbacks, her younger self (played by Jessie Buckley) struggles with balancing with her PhD coursework in comparative literature with her two daughters and her individual needs. These scenes provoke the most common reaction that I’ve heard about this movie: it sucks to be a mother.
The troubles of motherhood present a world that Gyllenhaal would gladly wander in, and righteously so. As an actress, she has played several complex characters weighed down by shameful desire, and Leda is another face that Gyllenhaal would wear well. Instead, she takes a backseat and films Colman making terrible mistakes, including the film’s most intimidating MacGuffin: she has accidentally taken Elena’s doll and has not given it back, despite Elena’s daily tantrums and the family’s tiring efforts to find it anywhere. Leda holding the doll during various points of the movie can be a punctuation to an intense flashback or a segue into a revealed secret, but our belief in Leda is as fragile and fractured as this doll situation (I held my breath in every scene with the doll, thinking that someone was going to walk in).
If you have some semblance of humor in the darkest of situations, The Lost Daughter does not have to be a dreary experience. Colman’s performance as an apprehensive British Karen is beautifully crafted. During awkward social interactions, she will literally run off into the distance to end the conversation. She will white-girl dance to Bon Jovi. She will face down a bunch of awful teenage boys for being disruptive at a movie theater without budging her position. Sometimes, the movie is positioned to show how characters react to Leda’s erratic behavior, verging on situational comedic beats that would seem unlikely if a young-faced Buckley had to carry both versions of Leda.
The question that remains at the end: is this a diss to motherhood? We can see that it’s difficult to be a mother who wants to experience pleasure, but I don’t think Gyllenhaal’s primary purpose is to put a mother’s uphill battle on display. In the larger picture, mothers are women who are taught to give their lives up because there’s a “beauty” in sacrifice. The expectations of women in society have placed them at a callous disadvantage, and deviations can make for an uneasy viewing experience. Selfish, ambitious, undeserving — a woman can be all of that and be worthy of a story.
The Lost Daughter
2021
dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal
121 mins
Screening at the Brattle on Saturday, 3/5 and Tuesday, 3/8!
Part of the series: More of the Best of 2021
