In the hands of a more established director, The Lost Daughter could be something more remarkable and thematically complicated. Unfortunately, Gyllenhaal doesn’t have the expertise to tackle such a project, and ironically, she ends up losing you. BFI London Film Festival presents The Lost Daughter in selected cinemas and on Netflix on December 31st.
Directorial debuts are always fascinating to watch unfold. They can be fantastic and launch you to immediate acclaim like Julia Ducournau’s Raw or Jeymes Samuel’s The Harder They Fall. They can also be terrible, like Rick Rosenthal’s Halloween II or the Strause Brothers’ Alien Vs Predator: Requiem. It’s often easier to debut with an original idea than to continue a pre-established world or adapt something into the cinematic format. The dangers of doing so are that some works require a distinct, focused vision to encapsulate their worlds properly. Debuting is about coming to understand yourself as a director, so attempting to challenge oneself by understanding someone else’s vision atop your own can topple you if you’re not careful. Unfortunately, Maggie Gyllenhaal has been toppled.
The Lost Daughter, adapted from the Elena Ferrante novel of the same name, follows Olivia Colman’s Leda on holiday, who begins to unravel after meeting Dakota Johnson’s Nina, who reminds her of her own past. Colman’s performance is by no means bad, but it does feel like you’re merely watching Olivia Colman on holiday rather than her character; perhaps the issue is being unable to see past Olivia Colman. It feels as though there’s little for her to disappear into due to the excessive flashbacks that Gyllenhaal incorporates for us to understand Leda. This is where Jessie Buckley appears as a young Leda, and it’s easily the best performance – Buckley performs double-duty, expertly emulating both a young Olivia Colman and the gradual unravelling of a mother on the edge of breakdown.
Buckley is clearly one of the rising stars of the past few years, capturing Colman’s cadence and mannerisms both as Leda and as herself. The Lost Daughter feels like a nuanced meditation on motherhood, opening a conversation beyond the typical on-screen representations we’ve seen before. Here, motherhood is a dreaded anchor chained to Leda, weighing her down and keeping her stagnant as she attempts to hold onto her individuality.
Leda’s fractured relationship with her daughters is the most intriguing cog in this psychological machine, but ironically, it’s rarely elaborated on beyond the flashbacks upon flashbacks. Surprisingly, there are parallels between The Lost Daughter’s thematic exploration and Titane’s themes – both are nuanced musings on motherhood that skew toward the suffocating, anchor-like nature endured by some. The difference is that Titane does this better.
We see little of the psychological consequences of young Leda’s actions on present Leda. It’s remarkably unclear as to what the actual conflict Leda’s facing is – is one of her daughters dead, hence the title? What exactly is meant by lost? Gyllenhaal never decides to tackle the material, creating an immensely frustrating protagonist to follow. Leda’s interactions with the island’s inhabitants become increasingly baffling as we’re given little to no insight into her thoughts or feelings on anyone aside from Nina, and even that has a bewildering conclusion that leaves you going, ‘What? Why?’
Gyllenhaal’s directing is entirely competent, but there’s little more to say about it. There’s nothing bad to say about any of the technical elements, but there’s nothing in The Lost Daughter that feels unique to Gyllenhaal. Everything is shot relatively by the numbers; conversations have mid-shots followed by close-ups to signify the importance of their emotion – the editing is linear and follows a general narrative structure. Come on, Maggie, give us some variety in your cinematography! The joys of working in psychological drama are that you get to play with perspective. Rather than excessively using flashbacks, perhaps we could’ve seen Leda’s memories bleed into her present, catching glimpses of herself from afar. The problem is that The Lost Daughter is a project that needs more than competence. It requires expertise, and Gyllenhaal doesn’t have that yet.
Because of Gyllenhaal’s ‘tell, don’t show’ attitude, The Lost Daughter also feels laboriously long. The original novel is only 160 pages, allowing direct insight into Leda’s psyche; here, it’s the opposite. As mentioned previously, Gyllenhaal seems to believe that ‘psychological drama’ allows her the luxury of conversations that go nowhere and tease things that never occur. Even the flashbacks eventually seem to regurgitate pointless information about Leda’s past that’s already been clarified for us.
Whereas in many films of the same genre, you’re excited that you don’t know where it will lead, with The Lost Daughter, you’re praying that it knows what it’s trying to say and actually is getting to a point. At points, it feels like it may be entering thriller territory, but then it pulls back entirely. This 2-hour film feels like 3 hours.
In the hands of a more established director, The Lost Daughter could be something more remarkable and thematically complicated. Unfortunately, Gyllenhaal doesn’t have the expertise to tackle such a project, and ironically, she ends up losing you.
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