VENICE 2021: The Lost Daughter
There are many actors turned directors and, unfortunately, most of them do not transition successfully. Part of it is definitely a penchant for focusing on actor-y moments, giving way to dialogue-heavy, overly dramatic films. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s debut, The Lost Daughter – based on an Elena Ferrante book – thankfully avoids this trapfall, as she showcases a strong understanding on the importance of visual storytelling.
The film has frequent intercutting between present day, where Olivia Colman’s Leda is enjoying a summer vacation on a Greek island, and the past, showing a young Leda played by Jessie Buckley, and how her marriage and relationship with her daughters was quite tough on her ambitions as an academic. When so many stories about motherhood tend to glorify the importance of mothers sacrificing their lives for the good of their children, it is commendable that this film shows just how tiring and emotionally draining raising kids can be. The frustration of Leda is palpable and, while she clearly wishes she had a better relationship with her two daughters, she also achieved the success she clearly was going for.
While the story itself is quite strong thematically, unfortunately it falls apart in the execution. Gyllenhaal chooses to use constant close-ups of people’s faces with a 4:3 aspect ratio, putting audiences into Leda’s shoes as she interacts with the ambiguous people vacationing on the island, but it makes for a repetitive and often nauseating visual style that does not pay off. Add to that quite a few moments of unintentional humour that become ridiculous, a jazzy soundtrack that is as grading as the cinematography, and an absolute waste of a massive cast – Dakota Johnson, Ed Harris, Paul Mescal and many others are here – and the film ultimately adds up to very little. A shame, because Ferrante’s novel did have a story worth telling that will resonate with many women, but the end result is lacklustre and leaves a lot to be desired, especially with an excessively long runtime of over 2 hours.