I can see why Maggie Gyllenhaal would've had an interest in choosing a book like The Lost Daughter to adapt into a film. Roles for women in Hollywood...or rather roles for women that have great complexity and substance...can be very hard to come by.
As written by Elena Ferrante, the character of Leda is rather cold at times and alienating. She has a lot of flaws and regrets, and the source material certainly doesn't shy away from that. Putting a character like this on film would be a challenge for any actor to find the layers so you don't find them insufferable or unlikable.
Two actresses are given the task to play Leda. In the present-day scenes, we get Olivia Colman while in the flashback scenes, we get Jessie Buckley.
In a lot of ways, Buckley is tasked with playing Leda at her worst...but here is where I am going to argue that her "worst" isn't necessarily something I would judge the character on.
Leda is a woman who has two daughters. When the movie begins, we learn that they are 25 (Bianca) and 23 (Martha) and we can tell from the moment we see the first couple of flashbacks that older Leda has a lot of regrets while younger Leda is on the verge of a collapse.
Leda is someone who, perhaps, was never meant to be a mother...and that helps serve as the core and catalyst to The Lost Daughter, which dropped on Netflix New Years Eve 2021.
It is being pushed as possible dark horse candidate for a Best Picture nomination while also netting potential noms for stars Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley while also slipping into the Adapted Screenplay race.
I can't say that I loved The Lost Daughter as a film, but I can say that I loved it as a character study. Leda is one of the more interesting characters I have seen in a movie in quite some time. As I said before, Leda can be cold and alienating but the stroke of genius was casting someone like Olivia Colman in the role.
Colman continues the tradition of British actresses who are just too damned remarkable for their own good. In the history books, Colman deserves to be placed alongside the likes of Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Judi Dench, and Dame Vanessa Redgrave. It is an old saying that has been said countless times, but she simply is able to convey so much with her eyes that you simply feel the depths of the character's life she is playing.
Colman is able to give Leda those layers that don't make you hate her, even at her most standoffish moments. Instead, I found myself wanting her to open up and perhaps try to connect with these people. As for "these people", Leda is currently on holiday in Greece and has managed to be drawn towards to a family that contains a young mother named Nina (Dakota Johnson) who has a very young daughter who is very willful and overly emotional. This is what sets off Leda into thinking a lot about her past with her two daughters where we see them begging for her attention and she simply wants to be anywhere else.
We watch young Bianca crying because she cut herself with a knife while Leda just sort of stands at the sink trying to almost tune out everything around her. Typing out that sentence, it almost sounds as if Leda was worthy to be reported to CPS for neglect. She wasn't an overly warm mother, but as present-day Leda admits, she is a "selfish" person.
The film doesn't really go into why she had children: did she think she wanted them or was she forced into it by her husband? Without that to go off of, all we know is that she doesn't have the maternal instinct and eventually that does grow into her feeling like she wants to somehow try to make up for it.
A lot of this further manifests when she abruptly steals Nina's daughter's doll. At first, you don't really get why she did and then when you realize Nina's family is actively seeking it out and offering a reward, you think Leda will return it. Instead, she keeps it and is trying to clean it up assumingly because she wants to make a good impression.
We also get a flashback in which young Bianca completely destroys a doll that Leda gave her that was her own as a little girl, which causes Leda to throw the doll out the window and it shatters all over the street. This further seems to solidify has some sort of personal agenda within herself to get this doll back in order.
The film does take a bit of drastic turn towards the end when Leda confesses to Nina that she stole the day. At first, you think she is going to say she found it and cleaned it up but instead she owns up to it and admits to being a selfish person and a horrible mother.
Nina freaks out and stabs Leda in the stomach with a hat pin that Leda herself bought for her.
The film ends on something of an ambiguous note as Leda proceeds to leave her villa with a puncture wound and then stops on a rocky beach where she collapses by the waves. The following morning, she wakes up when a wave hits her face. She promptly calls her adult daughters who had been trying to reach her...and we see that a relationship between them could be actually warming up.
I almost wondered if this was some kind of fantasy in her mind...but the obvious intention on Gyllenhaal's part is ambiguity.
So, the final results of The Lost Daughter are a little jumbled and unfocused with the script, but the script also provides a great opportunity for its actresses to play a truly interesting and complex character. Gyllenhaal also shows immense promise behind the camera as the film does have a truly dreamy and surreal atmosphere that helped aid to the film's somewhat sinister tone.
The Lost Daughter will be rated as follows:
Rating: 4/5
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