Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Triumph
On Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, “The Lost Daughter,” now streaming on Netflix.
Any good mother will readily agree that parenting presents many challenges. There are frustrations and fatigue. Any parent sometimes just wants to step back, sit in silence, and perhaps even hear his or her own thoughts. But this is remediable. Any good mother also knows that all she really needs is a little bit of undisturbed time in the evening, when the toys are put away, and when the dust has settled.
What happens when the normal emotions of motherhood are filled with problems and burdens that don’t go away? What if a woman is considered an unnatural mother, and called to the task of becoming a parent is something she fully and selfishly rejects? This is the subject of The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut (now streaming on Netflix).
Olivia Colman plays Leda Caruso, a 48-year-old woman vacationing alone in Greece. We learn that she’s a professor of comparative literature in Cambridge, MA (presumably Harvard), where she’s teaching Italian literature. Leda’s perpetually tense. Everything makes her suspicious, and throughout this vacation, she’s unable to relax.