‘The Lost Daughter’ Is a Slow Burner

The Lost Daughter revels in a slowly unfolding character study, pursuing an interior understanding of how motherhood embodies mental danger and why interaction with young daughters can be particularly brutalizing and guilt-ridden.

The film meanders so much trying to make important points through naturalistic behavior that finally audiences have to wonder what the hell is the point? You start out not quite knowing where director Maggie Gyllenhaal is going in her debut behind the lens after countless films in front of it. We recognize it is well crafted and thoughtfully naturalistic, but our efforts are not rewarded.

It’s a bit like The Power of the Dog also on Netflix but Power starts out with an interesting milieu of characters and tells its story step by clear step, rather than obfuscating the opening as the Gyllenhaal film does.

Daughter focuses on a middle aged professor, Leda, played by Olivia Colman, enjoying a working vacation on a Greek island, both drawn to and disturbed by a rowdy family of American tourists invading her space. Almost all is revealed or hidden by the looks among the participants.

Film patrons may feel misled early when a daughter of the tourists goes missing, though we soon learn that it is her missing doll that holds the key to the plot.

Since the film features Colman (nominated for best actress), an excellent actress frolicking with the likes of another excellent actor, Ed Harris, we remain a bit tolerant at the miniature pace of revelations. The more hypnotic and active understanding comes with a young version of the married Leda in flashbacks. An actress and singer worth remembering, Jessie Buckley, the best thing in the movie (and nominated for best supporting actress) emerges to fall into the tribulations, erotica and intellectual frustration that the middle-aged Coleman embodies.

As director, Gyllenhaal does nothing outrageous — we almost wish she would. She relies so heavily on naturalistic behaviorism — at which Colman and Harris excel – that the viewer feels thwarted in getting under the skin of these characters. As an aside, we admire Dakota Jackson for proving she can take on a real acting role, again in the behaviorist mold.

I don’t want to discount the revelations about the self-destruction of intellectual and sensual control that motherhood entails. But though the film has changed the characters from Italians and devotees of Italian literature (substituting a world of tourism and comparative literature while staying faithful to the pseudonym-named popular author Elena Ferrante), it has kept a lot of the author’s asides and supposedly revelatory ramblings.

Only when the film explores in Buckley the younger behavior that has created such a mentally agitated but cryptic Colman does the film and the editing provide some cinematic power. It’s a long wait for limited satisfaction, followed by a deliberately did-she or didn’t-she ending.

The Oscars have also been a rich time for reviewers, including these published by Urban Milwaukee: West Side Story, Tragedy of Macbeth, Being the Ricardos, Spencer, The Power of the Dog, King Richard, Nightmare Alley, plus a speculation on the richness of the supporting actress category and a consideration of the shorter Oscar format with fewer awards in prime time.

Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here.