The Lost Daughter

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🎙️ EPISODE 443: 04.12.22 I think I neglected to mention this on this show, but goddam the soundtrack to this movie is sooo bad. It almost knocked it down a peg to be honest. It's like a very shitty, very repetitive instrumental version of that tune "I Put a Spell on You" — it's horrible! (I tried to find something similar by searching "bad royalty free slow piano blues" on YouTube for the episode bed music, but what I ended up using — while also very bad — doesn't really sound anything like it.) But, thankfully, that's by far the only major blight on what turned out to be a solid directorial debut from America's Sweetheart turned budding auteur, Maggie Gyllenhaal.

After a bout of old age/Mandela effect wherein I thought she directed as well as starred in the completely meh/pretty bad The Kindergarten Teacher (the Licorice Pizza age gap has nothing on that movie! folks,,), I came to my senses, and figured out that she did not in fact helm that weird, mostly awful blob of a film. And so with this, The Lost Daughter, she remains not only untarnished, but **gasps** a true emergent talent.

This was far from perfect, but it was very good. It was completely unafraid to show its main character in not only an unsympathetic light, but a totally corrupt one.The hit-you-over-the-head obvious question, who's the real "Lost Daughter" aside, it's always refreshing to see morally ambiguous characters presented in raw, uncompromising ways. It never panders to the audience by showing either (A) that this person has really changed, or (B) that they've clearly repented for the sins, beyond the self-inflicted torture that comes naturally with being a shitty person/bad parent. The script also by Gyllenhaal, based on a novel, doesn't quite flush things out in the third act, as the conclusion of the main (tangible) story arc/conflict felt rushed, but its overall tone and style really worked for me on the whole. There is a lurking, quiet menace all around Olivia Coleman's character, and it's made all the more terrifying when you stop to realize its a completely self-imposed reality she cannot (or isn't willing to) escape from.

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 442 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 444 ⫸

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The Lost Daughter is a 2021 psychological drama film written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal in her feature directorial debut, based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Elena Ferrante. The film stars Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Dagmara Domińczyk, Jack Farthing, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, with Peter Sarsgaard, and Ed Harris. Colman also serves as an executive producer. It was released on September 3, 2021.