The Lost Daughter (2021)
January 1, 2022 5:31 PM - Subscribe

A woman's beach vacation takes a dark turn when she begins to confront the troubles of her past.

Maggie Gyllenhaal's directorial debut stars Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson, and Ed Harris.
posted by Zonker (7 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Richly dramatic with excellent performances. I loved it!
posted by Short Attention Sp at 8:05 PM on January 1, 2022


Just finished watching. Really powerful. Still processing it. I may come back with more thoughts but I really loved it. Curious about others’ impressions.
posted by profreader at 3:20 PM on January 2, 2022


I needed to process this one myself, and still do. I'm going to watch it again, but I really enjoyed the atmosphere, the ambiguity, the performances, and the willingness to allow a female character to enjoy sex, not enjoy parenting, and just generally be difficult when she wants to be without judgment. Also, more Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley in everything, please.
posted by Zonker at 3:48 PM on January 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


I loved everything about this movie until the last minute. Very few movies have stacked so many ambiguous layers so effectively, never letting us or the characters entirely off the hook. I'd never seen flashbacks used that way, to deepen our distance and test our ability to bond with the character. Sometimes I couldn't like her, but I couldn't look away, and it's rare to have a female character occupy a screen with so much difficulty.

But then that orange came out, and it felt like someone pushed a button to take a sad song and make it better. It felt like being given a Kit Kat bar at the end of a high-quality meal; not a good finish.
posted by argybarg at 3:24 PM on January 3, 2022 [1 favorite]


Good essay: https://www.romper.com/entertainment/watching-the-lost-daughter-was-a-physical-experience

Particularly this: Every time that Leda chose to do something other than accommodate the wants and needs of other people, I felt terrified for her.

That last minute was a bit pat, but didn't hurt the brilliance of the whole thing for me. As the end neared, I was relieved that the foreshadowed violence played out the way it did, keeping it all tightly wound and in scale with the rest of the story.
posted by bendybendy at 1:50 PM on January 14, 2022


…in scale wit the rest of the story”
Was the thing. A good/tough story well told. (Such a tough character! And like all difficult and attractive and repulsive and compelling and damn-near disasterous. Brilliantly portrayed and brilliantly told.

There’s a similar Alice Munro story, a mother loses touch with her daughter and sketches her ambivalence - it’s similarly affecting.
posted by From Bklyn at 3:17 PM on January 22, 2022 [1 favorite]


The top review on Letterboxd is “does for having kids what jaws did for sharks

Remarkable film. Excellent double feature with Krisha. If you can stomach it.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:43 AM on September 17, 2022 [1 favorite]


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