Olivia Colman delivers an acting masterclass in this off-kilter psychodrama from first-time director Maggie Gyllenhaal.
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.
Published 14 Dec 2021
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