Is she frustrated and lonely? Someone with psychopathic traits? Or a strong woman who dares to go against social conventions?
An exquisite Olivia Colman suggests in The Lost Daughter that 48-year-old college professor Leda may be it all at once, and more. After a short, ominous flashforward, we see Leda arriving alone in a Greek seaside town for a working holiday. How she reacts haughtily when a rowdy American-Italian family asks to move her beach chair. But also how she becomes mesmerized by the young mother Nina (Dakota Johnson) and her daughter Elena, who belong to the same family.
The young mother and child evoke flashbacks in Leda to her own motherhood in her twenties. And then, on a whim, the college professor steals the girl’s favorite doll. This seemingly banal action gives the entire film a thriller-like suspense. Because of the wrath of Nina’s family, who want the doll back at all costs for the inconsolable child. But especially because it becomes clear in a subtle and regularly less subtle way that something is rotten and gnawing at Leda. From the images of rotten fruit in the apartment she rented to the distant way she talks about her own daughters.
Debut director Maggie Gyllenhaal based her script on a novella by Elena Ferrante. The nationality of characters has been adjusted, so that they can, among other things, speak English among themselves. Just like the locations. At times it gives the film a different meaning than the book. The original story is an interior monologue that gives a little more insight into Leda’s background and her fascination with the folk Nina.
However, Gyllenhaal cleverly absorbs these omissions by making looking at Leda from a distance also an enrichment. As a result, the film sometimes confronts you with how you are preprogrammed to interpret certain, in itself neutral images, positively or negatively. Early in the film, for example, we see Leda eating alone in a Greek bar. Gyllenhaal lets us briefly look at Leda the way the handyman at the apartment she rented does: as someone who probably would have preferred company. But is that really so? Why do we almost automatically find a woman alone in a restaurant a bit sad? Because that’s the meaning given to similar images in so many other stories?
Something similar happens with the way in which motherhood comes into the picture. The first shots of young Leda and her children are bathed in soft light. It reinforces the message that was and is often repeated; children are angelic beings who enrich the lives of their mothers. But as the story progresses, that romantic narrative crumbles and we see things other than the cliché images of motherhood. The younger version of Leda (played by Jessie Buckley) struggles with fatigue, a daughter who is anything but angelic, and above all with having to efface her own ambitions and desires.
The answer to the question of what is brewing beneath the surface at Leda, let The Lost Daughter somewhat join drama l’evenement, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in September – where Gyllenhaal took the prize for best screenplay. True l’evenement shows how French society in the 1960s looked at women whose greatest ambition is not to become mothers, examines The Lost Daughter how women look at themselves when they discover that motherhood is not an all-consuming satisfaction.
It is impressive how Colman can make Leda into a completely unpleasant character, without alienating you as a viewer. And especially if you don’t get sucked into her thoughts, like in the book. Her selfishness and lack of empathy are indeed a bit pitiful at times, but are somehow envious. That’s also because Buckley as young Leda and Johnson as Nina also convincingly portray struggling mothers who seem to love their children but feel trapped. It makes The Lost Daughter to a remarkable debut that asks interesting questions about what mothers do out of real love for their child and what they believe themselves because of societal expectations.
#Struggling #Moms #Grim #Vacation #Lost #Daughter