What an impressive debut. Maggie Gylenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter” is such an assured directorial effort, using its mise-en-scene magnificently to tackle such a taboo subject. Along with Rebecca Hall’s “Passing,” it’s the best American debut of the year.
Tackling mothers who really shouldn’t be mothers, the film is set on a Coastal Greek town, where Leda, a Cambridge professor, decides to spend her serene one-week vacation. Ghosts that haunt her past start to be relived in vivid flashbacks that show her younger self (Jessie Buckley) struggling to be a mother of two young daughters.
These flashbacks get further ignited when present-day Leda (Olivia Colman) notices Nina (Dakota Johnson in her best performance) grappling with her own whiny daughter at the beach front. Nina is married to an abusive mob-connected husband — the entire ‘Soprano’ family is there on vacation — they are loud, obnoxious and putting a dent on what was supposed to be a peaceful vacation for Leda.
Colman’s performance is wryly brilliant. The more her Leda watches Nina’s parenting, the more she starts to crack, remembering her own struggles and inability to fully embrace motherhood. It’s a performance that deserves awards, a darkly humorous tour-de-force that riskingly tackles the selfish nature that some mothers struggle with.
Using gifted cinematographer Hélène Louvart (Happy as Lazzaro and Never Rarely Sometimes Always) and a sweeping score by Dickon Hinchliffe (maybe the best of the year), this is very much a director’s movie. Using great performances to tell her own personal tale, Gyllenhaal, a mother of two, turns out to be the perfect person to direct such a female-oriented tale about sexuality, motherhood and a women’s attempt to juggle both personal professional and careers.
It’s also a joy to watch Ed Harris cast as the local yoke, the man who rents out the Greek villa to Leda, only to hit on her at the bar. It’s not reciprocal. However, they do share a history of terrible parenting, so there’s three.
In fact, maybe Leda chose the wrong town to vacation in. The amount of sketchy characters that populate the resort are grimy and unlikable. Leda tries to make sense of her past mistakes as a mother while having to fend off, who’d a thunk it, other terrible parents. It’s a ludicrous proposition offered by Gyllenhaal, to hang out with these people, but it makes for a terrifyingly artful film about bad parenting. [B+]
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.