The Lost Daughter
2021
***
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Cast: Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Dagmara Domińczyk, Jack Farthing, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Peter Sarsgaard, Ed Harris
Leda, a middle-aged college professor, goes on a solo holiday to a Greek island. As she is drawn to a young mother and her daughter, she is flooded with painful memories from her own past. Maggie Gyllenhaal's ambitious directorial debut explores the pressures of motherhood and the unspoken regret of having children. This adaptation of Elena Ferrante's 2006 novel sounds intriguing on paper, but the film is long and unsettling in a wrong way. Many of the supporting characters remain undeveloped and the story is set in one of those movie holiday resorts where the guests and staff all are native English speakers. Olivia Colman gives a wonderfully understated performance in the lead and Jessie Buckley is also good as the younger version of Leda, even if the two actresses look or sound nothing like each other. Or well, maybe that's the whole point.
