In the early 2000s, there was a popular trend to start TV pilots in the climax and then go back in time, only catching back up near the end. Why was this so popular? Because when done well, it sets the audience up to be questioning every mundane thing for possible clues. In The Lost Daughter written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, based on the novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante, we first meet Leda (played by Olivia Colman) as she collapses on the beach from a wound, we are then immediately taken back to her arrival in the seaside town in Greece. By beginning such despite to humdrum initial introductions to people like Lyle (played by Ed Harris) and Will (played by Paul Mescal) there is a sinister undertone as you question which interaction will lead to her beach keel.
Leda makes her way to the beach, unaware that it will play a sinister role in her future, and partakes in leisure floating before moving to the chairs under the umbrellas to get to work and enjoy the peace. However, her tranquility is broken when Nina (played by Dakota Johnson) and her large family arrive at the beach. In a short sequence, we watch Olivia Colman play out a variety of emotions at their arrival: annoyance, intrigue (for Nina and her daughter), to needing to escape. It becomes obvious this family is going to play a part in whatever happens to Leda. It becomes even more apparent that will be the case when Nina’s daughter Elena wanders off, and Leda is the one to find her.
However, the story isn’t simple, and as Gyllenhaal parses out the backstory of a Young Leda (played by Jessie Buckley), a more complicated picture gets painted – about Leda, why she connected to Nina, and what might motivate someone to injure her later on. And at the center of everything is the idea of motherhood, the difficulty and the “naturalness” of it. Something girls often carry with them from childhood from the dolls they are given, many that simulate babies. Nina’s daughter Elena has one such doll, as did Leda before her, and Leda shared her doll with her daughter Bianca. Leda’s doll was named Mini-Mama, which is an apt name for the way those dolls are meant to shape girls.
The Lost Daughter marks Maggie Gyllenhaal’s feature debut as a writer/director, having made her short debut as part of last year’s pandemic collective of shorts Homemade, and what entrance she has made. And to have the conviction as a first-time director/screenwriter to set aside ego and let a juicy role like Leda, the kind of roles actors dream of for its layered complexity, go to Olivia Colman, who will likely receive another Academy Award nomination for her performance, speaks volumes of the kind of filmmaker Gyllenhaal is shaping up to be.
The production of The Lost Daughter did shift from an initial Jersey setting to Greece due to Covid and that explains a lot. We are told it’s summer and Leda’s in the Greece seaside town for vacation, but it never felt true. It seemed like it should’ve been set in bumper or low-season (AKA not summer) because the town was sparsely populated, and before the arrival of Nina and her large extended family the beach was basically a ghost town. All the characters we saw were either on vacation (Nina and Fam, Leda), or not originally from the town (Lyle and Will), so it didn’t read as true to life, speaking as someone that has travelled a lot during high and low seasons. High season (aka the time they would hire Will) there would be way more people everywhere, and we wouldn’t get those shots of tranquility broken by the arrival of Nina’s family in the early parts of the film because there would already be a crowd on that beach. And in bumper/low-season, it’s unlikely there would be a job for Will due to the lack of tourism. It took me out of the film a little, but understanding the production constraints they were under they did what they could.