'The Lost Daughter' A Review

The Lost Daughter is a drama about a middle-aged Harvard professor Leda(Olivia Coleman) who goes on a vacation to a Greek island, while there she observes a large family also on vaca particularly a young mother Nina(Dakota Johnson) struggling with her three year old daughter Elena. This causes her to reflect on and feel guilt and shame about her time as a young mother, shown in flashback with Leda played by Jessie Buckley, these scenes almost exclusively depict Leda being abusive, neglectful, and/or cold to her two daughters.

Coleman, no surprise, gives an assured, layered, complicated, powerful performance with Buckley playing a harmonious version of  the same character. Johnson isn't given enough lines or screentime to carveout much of a character and she is, in essence, a plot device for Jeda's character(which is a disappointment). All the supporting characters, the men particularly, are similarly thinly drawn with the exception of Dagmara Domińczyk as Callie who, even with the limited time she has, conveys a dimensional, compelling, seemingly real human being, virtually the only one in the whole film.

This is a film about a deeply anti-social narcissist, possible sociopath, where the flashbacks are virtually all depictions of trauma and the present is a series of cruel, thoughtless, stupid, absurd interactions. This is kind of a trend for prestige pictures of the last 5-10 years, neutral slice-of-life character studies of deeply unlikable characters, and this is about a middle-aged woman, a demographic underrepresented in these kind of movies, and it depicts a nuanced realistic version of motherhood that butts up against stereotypical roles and societal pressures. So as far as representation is concerned there's something to value here. However. 

Jeda as a character is very unpleasant and boring. Her behavior frequently unhinged to the point where her mental and physical health is in question, her privilege utterly unexamined, her emotions apparent but ultimately uncompelling as she seems to have virtually no awareness or connection to them nor is she interested in any kind of reflection or search for insight, she seems to regret some of her choices yet does nothing, changes nothing, behaves the same way she always has. She is a poster child for the AA saying "self-knowledge avails us nothing". She has no acceptance of her choices and seemingly no acceptance of who she is. She is both apologetic and non-apologetic about things she did in her past, she is conflicted, about everything. She intellectually knows what she's done and what she wants but it stops in the head. And perhaps this is realistic but cinema is not about realism alone. Jeda is sad and pathetic and mean, full stop. Depicting such a character offers nothing that the news or someone who is part of a dysfunctional family wouldn't already intimately know. It offers no insight, no hope, no path forward, no progress, aside from as noted above representation in and of itself. It is traumatic and forces the viewer simply to share that trauma. That all on top of a series of cringe inducing Karen-esk interactions which Jeda has with the Italian-American family that Nina is apart of that I won't go into.

It's great first time writer/director Maggie Gyllenhaal got to make this film with this budget and this cast, bringing a middle-aged woman's story, particularly one that questions the traditional role of motherhood, into the award season conversation. Yet this is an excoriating film, a trend of late, giving time and attention to profoundly pessimistic, bleak, nihilistic, apathetic characters and stories. And right now, more than ever, what is needed is hope and inspiration, that is the way forward, not prosaic existential malaise.

Currently streaming on Netflix.

Don't See It.