The Lost Daughter - Movie Review

Critics Score - 6 of 10

General Audience Score - 5 of 10

Brother and sister Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal have been appearing in movies since the early 1990’s and have each went on to have successful careers in Hollywood. Jake has  become one of the biggest actors on the big screen and Maggie has played in her share of films, but recently she’s decided to try her hand at directing. The new film The Lost Daughter has debuted on Netflix and Maggie shows some competence behind the camera instead of in front of it. Although Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley do some fine work, ultimately the screenplay Maggie herself adapted from the book of the same name fails to build momentum or tie plot lines together in any satisfying way. Like another 2021 debut director, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s film Tick Tick Boom, it’s easy to spot that this is a first time effort from Gyllenhaal. It’s very passable work to be sure, you can sense her vision must’ve been clear, but with what Maggie actually puts on the screen, The Lost Daughter will lose many along the way.

SYNOPSIS - We meet Lena (Olivia Coleman) as she walks down to a beach, wavers a bit and finally collapses on the rocks. The title screen hits but then we switch to Lena in her car, singing as she drives up the coast and arrives at the villa she’s staying at on holiday. She’s greeted by Lyle (Ed Harris), who is the caretaker for her European vacation home and within a couple minutes we get a sense of awkwardness from Lena’s interactions with Lyle. This is not an isolated event, this character is constantly involved in uncomfortable conversations. This continues the following day when Lena visits a quiet beach but her soaking in some salty tranquility is interrupted by a boisterous group of young people and their parents. The next day she sits and watches two of the people from the group, a mother Nina (Dakota Johnson) as she relaxes and her daughter playing with a doll. After a few moments she gets up and leaves with tears in her eyes, at this point the film begins to open up and we understand there’s much more going on with Lena than meets the eye. Eventually via some flashbacks of young Lena (Jesse Buckley) we begin to see who she was as a mother, the reasons for some of the odd behavior and why this trip in particular is having such a strange effect on Lena.

Once she’s packed her bags and the vacation comes to an end, we’ve gotten some interesting perspective on motherhood and the sacrifices and demands put upon parents in general. I’m not sure it’s entirely the character Lena’s fault, I’ve not read the book to know for certain, but people do things and scenarios play out in the film that sometimes make little sense as far as being based in reality. I’m befuddled as to where the fault lies for some of this confusion. Many directors will take a screenplays material, turn it into awkward interactions and uncomfortableness onscreen and then build on that to create tension, dramatic effect and then payoff in the end. This film doesn’t seem interested in doing anything other than creating the awkward moments. The cinematography is decent, like I said, Gyllenhaal has an eye for the camera, the music is more interesting than compelling or even good, and again, it fails the film in any effort to create a sense of momentum or drama. The problematic screenplay or possibly source material combined with a first time director leaves us with an uneven film in terms of tone, plot direction and especially conclusion.

SUMMARY - Although the film is worth seeing for Olivia Coleman alone and she singlehandedly does most of the heavy lifting for the film, there’s only so much she can do. Some critics and Coleman fans will take a liking to and get behind the oddness and nuance of The Daughter, but general audiences and the rest of us will just be Lost.