The Lost Daughter (2021) Let's start out by saying something positive about this other Netflix entry in the annual, exhausting culture-vulture awards season sweepstakes..........
Here goes......unlike "The Power Of The Dog", (a roofie masquerading as a film), this one kept us attentive and alert through its entirety. Can't say we enjoyed it all that much since its subject matter is fundamentally sad and depressing.
But the actors, direction and story had us riveted to it in a way that the phony-baloney, ultra pretentious 'Power Of The Dog' could never hope to achieve.
And the film has a good shot as replacing "Mommie Dearest" as the all time worst movie to watch on Mother's Day........
Many many films, both classics and lesser efforts have centered around the characters of women unable, unworthy or unwilling to assume the joys ,sorrows, burdens and heavy responsibilities of motherhood. Yet for one reason or another, or simply cruel fate, they end of raising children anyway......much to the misery and discontent of the unhappy moms and their kids.
Actress-director Maggie Gyllenhaal's film takes a unnerving, unblinking examination at two such women, generations apart. Their unlikely collision on a sundrenched vacation island near Greece turns the movie into something of a low boil suspense tale, taking its time to reveal all its secrets.
Leda, (Olivia Coleman), a divorced academic with two grown estranged daughters takes a solitary vacation to the island, entrancing Lyle (Ed Harris) the resort's expatiate American handyman. But she fixates on Nina (Dakota Johnson) a toddler's young mom who's newly arrived as part of loud, boisterous and vaguely threatening American clan.
Initially running afoul of that bunch and their most dominating member (Dagmara Dominczyk), Leda finds a way to ingratiate herself back into their good graces by locating Nina's wandering lost tyke......a mere ploy to befriend Nina.
But to what purpose, really? And what in the world is Leda up to by secretly hiding and obsessing over the toddler's beloved lost doll?
Leda's doll-knapping, a truly unsettling, almost Hitchcockian move, sets off a series of painful flashbacks that display the younger Leda (Jessie Buckley) as an ambitious rising star in academia.....and saddled with the two children she has little interest or patience in raising.
Maggie Gyllenhaal hasn't acquired much directorial style, but she's brutal in honing in on all of the events and incidents in Leda's backstory that no doubt led to her current estrangement from her adult daughters. And in Nina, who seems uncomfortable as a new mom and trapped in that obnoxious clan, Leda mistakenly thinks she's found a kindred spirit.
As we'd expected, nothing ends well here for anybody but the film really doesn't traffic in huge dramatic crescendos.......it settles for a quiet disturbing, incisive view of dysfunctional lives, of roads not taken and the roads taken and then regretted in tortured memories.
While some might find it maddening, we loved the film's final ambiguous moments, designed to generate debate and discussion.......like some of the celebrated arthouse films of the 1970's.
Not as easy watch for sure.......but we did stay interested. And for this type of movie that we usually hate on sight, (panting for awards like a hungry puppy begging for treats), that's high praise indeed.
Superbly acted and crafted, "The Lost Daughter" surprised us by being definitely worth our time.......3 stars (***).
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