The Lost Daughter (2021)

Score: 4 / 5

A character study of the highest tier, The Lost Daughter dropped with almost no fanfare on Netflix except for those of us who knew it was coming. It's Maggie Gyllenhaal's debut as director, and if that wasn't an interesting enough reason to want to see it, it's got Oscar written all over Olivia Colman's lead performance. But the film is also deeply complex, a sort of puzzle box for the cognitive adult who enjoys linking literary conceits with arthouse filmmaking. This is not the kind of movie that should have premiered on a streaming service -- it deserves a small, stately auditorium and a box of malted milk balls or chocolate covered raisins -- and yet here it is, sure to be overlooked or underseen by anyone unable to stop fidgeting or touching their phone while lounging on their sofa.

Endlessly literary, the film concerns a brief Grecian vacation taken by a middle-aged professor and translator named Leda (Colman). She's alone in the gorgeous resort town, and seems content to be so, walking through the trees down to the beach, reading under an umbrella, occasionally soaking in the sun and water. But, then again, her contentedness might be a bit forced, and it breaks now and again to see straining paranoia underneath. Her reactions to the people around her -- we're forced to watch other sunbathers and attendants along with Leda -- are striking, intense, and often internalized. While people-gazing, she might start to hyperventilate, eyes brimming with tears, before grabbing her book and hurrying in another direction. When another family asks her to move to another beach chair so they can all sit together, she refuses with disdain and almost cruelty before clearly getting upset that they are upset with her.

More than once, I wondered exactly what kind of movie I was watching. By the time Leda stares longingly at another woman (Dakota Johnson) and her young daughter on the beach, I feared this might become a Sapphic romance or even thriller, given the coldly impersonal first half hour or so and Leda's clearly unstable state of mind. Leda's attempts at conversation are uncomfortable, and she looks to be in pain while talking to the hotel caretaker (Ed Harris) and the beach boy (Paul Mescal) in early scenes. We get the impression more than once that Leda is not a reliable narrator, and I would not be surprised if the source novel was also written in first person, much like this movie, because despite the beautiful landscapes, I haven't felt so claustrophobic in a film all year. It makes you want to pause it just to come up for air, out of Leda's suffocating control of perspective. Leda's intense observance of the young mother and child seem triggering to her.

Then, suddenly, just as something weird is going on with Leda, the scene abruptly shifts, and it took me a little while to understand that the main narrative is interspersed with scenes from Leda's days some twenty years earlier, when Leda is played by Jessie Buckley. It's an inspired casting choice, but also a brilliant performance from Buckley as an irritated and overwhelmed young mother to two demanding daughters. These aren't really flashbacks, and if you're not paying attention, you'd think it was all happening in a unity of time, in the (fittingly) Greek sense. But really these are parallel stories that give us a more complete picture of Leda while emphasizing the relationship between motivation, sacrifice, and consequence. Younger Leda is so tired of this family life she apparently didn't want, and she's desperate to escape it to pursue her professional ambitions, which reach a boiling point when a celebrity scholar (the ever creepy Peter Sarsgaard) shows interest in her scholarship.

This is not a movie to watch lightly. The Lost Daughter is relentlessly challenging to watch, a test of emotional endurance not in a tragic or tearjerking way but because of its aggressive strangeness. To the casual viewer, it may appear inert. But if you cut out all distractions and dwell with Leda and the other characters in the moment, the film reveals itself unafraid to be ugly, messy, and often troubling. It will surely spark valuable conversations about "bad mothers" and "bad daughters," the latter of which is largely missing from feminist seminar discussions, but it will hopefully also inspire conversations about this kind of somewhat inaccessible storytelling. This is high art of cinema, and it trusts its audience to do the necessary legwork to keep up. I can't say it's a particularly entertaining film, but it's got one of the best performances of the year and it offers unique and rewarding challenges to its viewers.