The Lost Daughter (2021 | USA | 121 minutes | Maggie Gyllenhaal)
A measured feature debut from director Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter provides an incisive look at motherhood seen through the expressive eyes of Oliva Colman. It is one of the best films of the year, coming out in the final moments of 2021.
Coleman stars as Leda, a professor who takes a vacation to a serene beach where she hopes to relax largely in solitude. Both are dashed when a large family gathering invades the tranquil beach, bringing back painful memories for Leda about her own fraught time as a mother. Dakota Johnson’s Nina, a young mother of a child who loses her doll, begins to confide in Leda. The two form a tense and strange relationship that consistently feels ever so slightly off-kilter. It is in seeing Nina struggle to be a mother to her child that causes Leda’s own past to come rushing back into her present.
Based on the formidable yet fleeting novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante, the film captures the emotion and pain of its source material to magnificent effect. It is a masterclass in acting by not just Colman, who never seems to miss, but also by the equally outstanding Jessie Buckley. The two play different versions of the same character, Buckley as the younger and Colman as the older, that together build a complex yet deeply flawed whole.
Leda is still dealing with the repercussions of decisions she made in her youth. Through flashback, we see how she is still struggling to reckon with her past in her later life. While the film lacks the interior perspective of the novel, both Colman and Buckley are completely in sync in bringing the character to life. Never mind that they don’t look much alike, the manner in which the soul of the character is carried through the different phases of her life makes their combined performances completely arresting.
Buckley plays Leda as an ambitious graduate student with a youthful joy that is slowly being worn down by the responsibility of raising two children. She desires something more and every expression of the young mother seems to cry out for escape. Leda feels woefully trapped and directionless, unable to pursue her professional ambitions in which she shows much promise. There is no one who seems to care about how she feels suffocated in her own life. She is left to find her own sense of self when she has had to give so much of who she is to her children. In the moments where she lashes out at them, frustrated by their demands for her attention, it is painful yet understandable.
The way Colman plays Leda is much quieter though no less impactful. In fact, it is in the juxtaposition of the two performances that the film’s tragedy begins to take hold. In the older Leda, the youthful joy is largely gone and replaced by a far more tentative disposition. She isn’t entirely unhappy as she experiences many small moments of pleasure. However, exhaustion infects all of these moments and Colman delicately shows the toll this weight has taken.
Even eating a dessert or seeing a film are temporary respites, shattered before they can be fully experienced. In the case of the film, Leda’s solitary enjoyment is interrupted by a group of boisterous and selfish boys who barge into the screening without caring about how disruptive they are being. The frustration in Colman’s eyes that slowly takes over her whole body is devastating, a glimpse of the pain of having even little things taken away from her.
As the film flashes between the two timelines, Gyllenhaal employs a tactile framing that keeps the focus on the moments that mark an impending downfall. As Buckley’s Leda struggles to find herself and makes impulsive decisions, the impact is felt in the somber future of Colman’s Leda. The elder version still makes rash and destructive decisions as well, with one specific choice driving much of the story and inexorably intertwining her with Nina. Only now, it’s in a manner that feels far more muted, as if even her rebellion has itself lost the passion that she had as a young woman.
It is in this contrast where The Lost Daughter really finds something poignant amongst the pain. It speaks to how, even as she has matured over the years, the uncertainty and pitfalls of motherhood still haunt Leda. The film complicates and challenges the prospect of whether everyone should raise children when it can take such a toll. It can feel bleak, though the film makes a change from the book to offer something resembling solace. This small and unnecessary alteration softens the ending of the story, thankfully, without dulling it. What remains is still a formidable piece of work with the vision to craft a nuanced story about our broken, flawed selves.
You can watch The Lost Daughter in theaters and on Netflix starting December 31st.