Search results
People also ask
Is the Lost Daughter a good movie?
Is the Lost Daughter based on a true story?
What is the Lost Daughter about?
Is the Lost Daughter an assured debut?
Dec 31, 2021 · "The Lost Daughter," an adaptation of Elena Farrante's 2006 novel of the same name, is Maggie Gyllenhaal's directorial debut, and what a debut it is. Harrowing, unpredictable, painful, confrontational, this is a movie for grown-ups.
Sep 3, 2021 · Sep 3, 2021 1:00pm PT. Critics Pick. ‘The Lost Daughter’ Review: ‘Unnatural Mother’ Olivia Colman Makes Amends in This Brilliant but Risky Thriller. In this remarkable directorial debut, Maggie...
Dec 22, 2021 · The Lost Daughter review: Motherhood isn't easy. Olivia Colman toplines an excellent cast in Maggie Gyllenhaal's nuanced directorial debut. By. Joshua Rothkopf. Published on December 21, 2021...
- 4 min
- Joshua Rothkopf
Dec 31, 2021 · The Pitiless Excellence of The Lost Daughter By Alison Willmore , a Vulture film critic Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Elena Ferrante adaptation for Netflix is the best movie of the year.
- Alison Willmore
- Movie Critic
- Maggie Gyllenhaal knocks it out of the park with her theatrical directorial debut.
- Netflix Spotlight: December 2021
- What's your favorite Olivia Colman performance?
- Verdict
By Tara Bennett
Updated: Dec 17, 2021 11:20 pm
Posted: Dec 17, 2021 11:13 pm
The Lost Daughter in select theaters Dec. 17th, 2021, and exclusively on Netflix Dec. 30, 2021.
Author Elena Ferrante has amassed global plaudits for crafting stories that unabashedly tell stories of the female experience: the good, the bad, and the ugly. In adapting Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal has carried that authenticity into the cinematic realm and expanded upon its themes with mesmerizing veracity and assuredness. Together with actresses Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley — who both embody the character of Leda Caruso in two different eras of her life — they craft a portrait of a woman rarely portrayed and seen quite like this on screen.
Following much of the narrative spine of Ferrante’s novel, Gyllenhaal’s script also retains the book’s structure of revealing portions of the life of academic Leda Caruso, in her current middle age (Colman) and with flashbacks to her past (Buckley) when she was raising two young, strong-willed daughters and pursuing her research. Leda opens the film alone on summer holiday on an unnamed Greek island that’s not particularly gorgeous or overstuffed with tourists. She clearly relishes the quiet, not keeping to a schedule or confined by even the closed windows of her rented villa. It’s a glimpse of what keeps her content, which is quickly shattered by the very large, Queens-based multigenerational family that invades the resort beach and Leda’s peace with their loud music, voices, boats, and general selves. They also bring a lot of drama, which Leda quietly enjoys observing from her centrally located beach chair in the midst of them. In particular, she’s captivated by the mother/daughter dynamic of Nina (Dakota Johnson) and her young, demanding daughter, Elena (Athena Martin Anderson). When Elena goes missing one afternoon on the beach, Leda gets involved in the search and finally speaks to the family swirling around her, which inexorably ties them together in combustible ways.
That inciting incident kicks off a journey within for Leda, as she remembers her younger self struggling with her own two girls, especially headstrong Bianca (Robyn Elwell), who also went missing during a beach trip. As she contends with Nina’s family, more flashbacks intrude about Bianca, who demanded her attention despite overall fatigue, lack of parenting support from her working husband, and the tunnel vision she slipped into regarding her scholarly research. It’s clear in the then and now, Leda has a complicated relationship with what society deems “proper” maternal feelings, even candidly expressing to Nina that, “Children are a crushing obligation.”
Colman and Buckley both fashion Leda into a fascinating grab bag of mercurial impulses. But Colman is also pushed to personify the prickly and inscrutable nature of Leda in the present, which swings wildly from closed and biting to friendly and charming, and even sympathetic and at times empathetic. Her Leda exists as a swirling cloud of incongruous emotions and ambitions that she only unleashes in tiny bursts; a woman who has learned the hard way how unacceptable they are to societal norms.
The Favourite (2018)
Fleabag (2016-2019)
Broadchurch (2013-2017)
The Crown (2016 - )
The Father (2021)
Other -- let us know in the comments.
The Lost Daughter is a movie told with breathtaking assurance and a striking point of view. It’s unafraid to peel back the curtain on the ugly, complicated things that women aren’t supposed to think about, much less act upon, in regards to self, ambition, sexuality, and motherhood. And then it explores, with an unflinching gaze, what those truths l...
Sep 5, 2021 · A flirtatious fellow academic (played by Peter Sarsgaard) takes an interest in her, and she succumbs to an affair. All of this comes back to the older Leda—and is revealed to us—as she becomes ...
Dec 26, 2021 · No, these women do enough self-punishing on their own. Smartly, and almost unbearably, The Lost Daughter is something of a stealthy thriller — because that damn doll is missing. And Leda has it.
