The Lost Daughter (film)

The Lost Daughter
Promotional release poster
Directed by	Maggie Gyllenhaal
Screenplay by	Maggie Gyllenhaal
Based on	The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante
Produced by	Charles Dorfman Maggie Gyllenhaal Osnat Handelsman-Keren Talia Kleinhendler
Starring	Olivia Colman Dakota Johnson Jessie Buckley Paul Mescal Dagmara Domińczyk Jack Farthing Oliver Jackson-Cohen Peter Sarsgaard Ed Harris
Cinematography	Helene Louvart
Edited by	Affonso Gonçalves[1]
Music by	Dickon Hinchliffe[2]
Production companies	Endeavor Content Pie Films Samuel Marshall Productions In the Current Faliro House Productions
Distributed by	Netflix (United States) Spentzos Films (Greece)[3]
Release date	September 3, 2021 (2021-09-03) (Venice) December 17, 2021 (2021-12-17) (United States)
Running time	121 minutes[4]
Countries	United States Greece
Language	English

The Lost Daughter is a 2021 psychological drama film written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal in her feature directorial debut, based on the novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante. The film stars Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Dagmara Domińczyk, Jack Farthing, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, with Peter Sarsgaard, and Ed Harris. Colman also serves as an executive producer on the film. The lead character of Leda is borrowed from the W. B. Yeats poem Leda and the Swan, which is in turn based on Greek mythology.^[5]

The Lost Daughter had its world premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on September 3, 2021, where Gyllenhaal won the Golden Osella Award for Best Screenplay.^[6] It began a theatrical limited release in the United States on December 17, 2021, prior to streaming on Netflix on December 31. The film received acclaim from critics.

Plot

While on holiday in Greece, middle-aged college professor Leda Caruso (Olivia Colman) meets Nina (Dakota Johnson), a young mother, after Nina's three-year-old daughter Elena goes momentarily missing on the beach. Leda finds Elena and returns her to Nina, who expresses her growing exhaustion and unhappiness. Elena is upset after she loses her favourite doll, which Leda has secretly taken. In flashbacks, it is revealed that young Leda (Jessie Buckley) also struggled with being a young mother to her two daughters, Bianca and Martha, often losing her patience and becoming withdrawn from her family.

One evening, Leda has dinner with Lyle (Ed Harris), her hotel's caretaker, who sees that she has the doll but doesn't comment on it, nor does he tell Nina. Leda later discovers Nina is having an affair with Will (Paul Mescal), an assistant at the resort, and Nina explains her husband Toni (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is very controlling. The search for Elena's doll continues, with Nina even putting up flyers offering a reward for its return.

At a market, Leda buys Nina a hatpin to help hold her sunhat in place. When Nina asks Leda about her daughters, Leda becomes emotional; she reveals that she had abandoned them for three years after she became too overwhelmed, leaving them with her now ex-husband, during which time she had an affair with a fellow professor (Peter Sarsgaard). She admits that being away from her daughters felt "amazing", and she only went back to them when she genuinely missed them. Nina learns that Leda knows about her and Will, and Will later asks Leda if they can borrow her apartment to have sex.

The next day when Nina arrives at Leda's to get the apartment keys, Leda admits to being a selfish and "unnatural" mother and warns Nina that her depression will never go. Leda also gives her Elena's doll, confessing that she took it and that she was "just playing". Nina reacts angrily and stabs Leda in the stomach with the hatpin before leaving. That night, Leda packs her bags and leaves the resort, but drives her car off the road due to the pain from her wound. She stumbles down the beach and collapses on the shoreline.

The next morning, Leda awakes on the beach and calls Bianca, who happens to be with Martha. They express their relief to hear from their mother, from whom they had not heard from in a few days. Leda says she is fine and then looks down to discover an orange in her hands; she peels the orange skin off "like a snake", the way she had done for her daughters when they were little.

Cast

Production

Maggie Gyllenhaal acquired the film rights to the Elena Ferrante novel in October 2018, and wrote and directed the adaptation.^[7]

In February 2020, Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson and Peter Sarsgaard were cast in the film.^[8] In August, Paul Mescal was added,^[9] and in October 2020, Oliver Jackson-Cohen was cast as well,^[10] with Ed Harris, Dagmara Domińczyk, Jack Farthing and Alba Rohrwacher joining in November.^[11]

Principal photography began in Spetses, Greece, in September 2020.^[12][13]

Release

The Lost Daughter had its world premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on September 3, 2021.^[14] In August 2021, Netflix acquired distribution rights to the film in the United States and several other countries,^[3][15] adding more markets, including the United Kingdom, in October.^[16] The film screened at film festivals in the Telluride,^[17][18] Hamptons,^[19] London,^[20] Lyon Metropolis,^[21] Mill Valley,^[22] Montclair,^[23] New York,^[24] San Diego (closing night)^[25] Zurich.^[26] and Whistler Film Festival.^[27] It was released in the United States on December 17, 2021, in a limited release prior to streaming on Netflix on December 31, 2021.^[28][29]

Reception

At its opening night world premiere, the movie received a four-minute standing ovation from Venice Film Festival attendees in the Sala Grande.^[30]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 96% of 181 reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A strikingly assured debut for writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter unites a brilliant cast in service of a daringly ambitious story."^[31] Metacritic, another aggregator, sampled 46 critics and calculated a weighted average score of 86 out of 100, indicating "universal acclaim."^[32]

Accolades

References

External links

• The Lost Daughter at IMDb