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The Lost Daughter Movie Review

The Lost Daughter is a 2021 psychological drama film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal and starring Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley. This is a really disorganized movie.

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“How did it feel – to be away from your daughters?

It felt amazing“

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A woman’s beach vacation takes a dark turn when she begins to confront the troubles of her past. The film’s premise is actually pretty strong and the central statement that not all women are fit for motherhood and that some are even happier without their children is provocative, but truthful, so I had no problem with this depiction.

However, what bothered me are the movie’s psychological elements. In particular, the whole doll subplot felt both ridiculous and disturbing to me, but not in a good way. The filmmakers clearly had a feeling that this tortuous protagonist and her flashbacks and crazy ideas would work, but it just doesn’t. In fact, I found myself more and more distanced from this woman as the film progressed instead of the opposite effect.

What is it with all these reviewers and cinephiles finding themselves in Leda’s character and this movie at large? I find it troubling that so many of them relate to a film about a deeply insane woman. Yes, Olivia Colman was terrific in the role. I am not a fan of this actress personally, but even I have to admit that she killed it here and was believable throughout.

But even she could not save the character from simply being too insane, too unrelatable and overly messily written. The flashbacks, in fact, only made things worse. The editing is all over the place here. Jessie Buckley did a great job as well, but these scenes simply were chaotic, not well written nor were they well filmed at all.

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The Lost Daughter is Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut after decades of being an actress. I don’t know why there is this narrative push to accept her as an amazing filmmaker just with this one movie, but I honestly found her direction very mediocre and clearly one of a first-time director. The scenes with Dakota Johnson were the best and warmest in the film, but otherwise the movie left me cold not just with its slow pace, but also with its very unsympathetic characters, a lack of clear ideas and genuinely troublesome structure. The technical aspects overall are quite weak.

The Lost Daughter is a different kind of film that puts an opposite spin on motherhood. Olivia Colman is terrific in the main role while Jessie Buckley also delivered a strong performance. The movie has its emotional moments and some interesting sequences, but it was so sloppily directed by the first-time director Maggie Gyllenhaal while the editing was particularly inferior with the flashbacks being frustratingly chaotic. I also find it baffling and deeply troubling that so many of critics and cinephiles relate so strongly with these movies about genuinely insane people.

My Rating – 3