The Lost Daughter

Cin­e­ma is full of sto­ries about trou­ble in par­adise. There is some­thing about the unspoiled tran­quil­i­ty of sun and sea that tempts past demons to the sur­face, as if our species wasn’t built to be hap­py for long. Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal uses her direc­to­r­i­al debut – based on a 2006 nov­el of the same name by Ital­ian sen­sa­tion Ele­na Fer­rante – to rev­el in and wres­tle with what it looks like to have been a bad moth­er. The result is an off-kil­ter psy­chodra­ma dri­ven by a stress­ful lead­ing lady.

When Leda (Olivia Col­man) first arrives at the Greek island where she is rent­ing a room from weath­er­beat­en Amer­i­can expat, Kyle (Ed Har­ris), she can’t believe her luck. She is a suc­cess­ful aca­d­e­m­ic who teach­es Ital­ian Lit­er­a­ture, pre­sum­ably at Har­vard (she men­tions being from Boston by way of Ship­ley in York­shire) and is tak­ing a solo hol­i­day for her sum­mer break.

The always-excel­lent Col­man proves her ver­sa­til­i­ty anew by act­ing in a mode not seen before in her back cat­a­logue. Under Gyllenhaal’s direc­tion the sweet­ness that radi­ates from her face, voice and ener­gy are under­cut by a cal­cu­lat­ed sense of ani­mal self­ish­ness that swings between impres­sive and excessive.

And any solo trav­eller who has ever defend­ed their space from the pre­sump­tu­ous over­spill of a group is like­ly to cheer inside when Leda refus­es to move from under a beach umbrel­la to make way for a fam­i­ly at the request of preg­nant woman, Kalli (Dag­mara Domińczyk), who is joined by her hus­band and a youth who calls Leda a ​“cunt”. Three mem­bers of the intim­i­dat­ing­ly large cabal include Nina (Dako­ta John­son) a dark-haired vix­en who has a daugh­ter, Ele­na, with hus­band, Toni (Oliv­er Jackson-Cohen).

One day, while Nina and Toni are fight­ing, Ele­na goes miss­ing. The film flash­es back to a time when Leda, as a young moth­er (played by Jessie Buck­ley), is search­ing for her own lost daugh­ter. Ear­ly signs that this is a char­ac­ter study less ordi­nary man­i­fest in Colman’s steely reac­tion to this objec­tive­ly dis­tress­ing mem­o­ry. This is a woman who can wil­ful­ly freeze her emo­tions dead. She does so and then sets off to find Ele­na, return­ing her to a grate­ful Nina. Then, for some rea­son, she steals the child’s trea­sured doll.

Inter­ac­tions with the fam­i­ly con­tain a strange chem­istry, pleas­ant-seem­ing but with a hint of sour­ness that threat­ens to over­whelm the mood. The extent to which this family’s malev­o­lence is real, or a fig­ment of Leda’s imag­i­na­tion, is some­thing that Gyl­len­haal nev­er betrays. The Lost Daugh­ter is a strange beast with an unwieldy struc­ture and an uncan­ni­ness that is nev­er quite anchored by events. Dis­parate plot­lines abound with­out com­ing togeth­er in a sat­is­fy­ing­ly coher­ent way.

It may not all add up but this is an ambi­tious and taboo-tack­ling debut with an atmos­phere that lingers thanks to gut­sy per­for­mances from Col­man and Buckley.