Film Review - The Lost Daughter

This is a line that stuck with me since my first viewing of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Oscar nominated directorial debut, The Lost Daughter.

I have always been fascinated by the concept of motherhood – I’ve always felt that society puts a disproportionate emphasis on the significance of ‘the mother’, not just on the individual level, but on our community – on society. ‘Mother’ is sacred. The invention of the ‘Virgin Mary’ ruined motherhood for all the women and birth givers out there, in my opinion. She is perfect, she birthed Jesus Christ for Christ’s sake, without even sacrificing her chastity. Mary gave her body and soul for her child - she was the Madonna, weeping as she held the limp, naked body of her dead son. But what about Jesus’ dad? To quote Laura Dern’s unforgettable character in Marriage Story, “God is the father and God didn’t show up!”. Our system, and the very belief our morality is based on, justifies an absent and neglectful father while setting women up for failure.

Society wants women to be mothers, and for women to feel solely empowered as a mother – to feel that motherhood gives them self-worth. It’s an ideology that keeps women subservient without necessarily feeling worthless, so there’s no reason to complain. If a woman is satisfied and finds their purpose in simply birthing and raising children, she will lose her appetite for life, for independence and ambition. Women, from their childhood, are groomed into being mothers - a natural mother. Have you ever had a conversation with an older relative perhaps, where you expressed your fear of motherhood and were told not to worry, that you will grow into it? I find that as I start to reach the age my mother was when she had me, her first and only child. I spend more and more time contemplating what kind of mother I would make, and if I would ever fill that role. My own mother was not much of a natural, conventional mother either; she’s a complicated woman, like myself and most others.

Perhaps this is why The Lost Daughter struck a chord with me. A Netflix original adaptation of a novel, The Lost Daughter illustrates Leda (Olivia Colman), a 48-year-old professor and mother of two, and her seaside trip to Greece. It is not a relaxing one, as it turns out, as she is joined by a dodgy family from Queens. Out of this group, Leda immediately fixates on Nina (Dakota Johnson), a young mother seemingly struggling to take care of her young daughter, Elena.

We soon find out that this gravitation is out of empathy; for Leda herself, as we find out, was a flawed mother – a guilty mother. Society demonises women who aren’t perfect, robotic mothers willing to give their wholeself to raising their children. Women who have mixed feelings about motherhood. So, you are taken aback as Leda utters bitterly through a smile early into the film; “Children are a crushing responsibility”. You are instantly made aware of your preconceived expectation of Leda, a middle aged, devoted mother (a ‘cool mum’ at that; she teaches Italian literature!) of 2 adult children that find guidance and support in her. And in the dizzying, smothering flashback scenes where Leda is proven otherwise - losing her patience, feeling anxious and honestly neglectful in pursuit of her career ambitions - you see not just

Words by Jenny Jung

fragments of your own mother, but yourself as well. As a young woman with impossible goals and competing priorities and desires, I admit I can’t imagine myself doing any better parenting than Leda did. In this way, The Lost Daughter reveals a secret that women for generations and centuries have pretended not to exist – a gross taboo, but also a reality. It’s a refreshing portrayal of complicated women and mothers; in films akin to Hereditary, women with a complicated relationship to motherhood are portrayed as psychotic. In The Lost Daughter, Leda is completely humanised, and you can feel her guilt weigh in your heart as she tearfully describes her three years away from her children as “amazing”. It’s relatable in a way you did not know you had in yourself.

Without giving away too much of the plot (because you really, really need to watch this film for yourself), Leda steals Elena’s baby doll – a doll similar to the one she had as a child. Upon my first viewing, I found this subplot confounding and confusing. Leda, who seemingly takes to Nina and wants to help her, steals her daughter’s doll and keeps it despite knowing that this has made life a lot harder for Nina as a mother. She cleans and clothes the doll, and even falls asleep with it in her arms. After giving myself some time to digest this film and watching it again recently, I see now why Leda attaches so much to the doll. In one of the earlier flashbacks, you see Leda entrusting her daughter with her childhood doll, only for her to destroy it and draw all over it. In a frenzy of frustration, Leda throws the doll out of the window and watches it shatter into pieces. Seeing a grown woman with her own children become so distraught over a ruined baby doll, you can’t help but feel Leda never outgrew her inner child – she is selfish and throws tantrums when she doesn’t get her way. A complete subversion of how we expect a mother to behave, we realise that the doll is more than just a toy, but a straw at which she grasps in an attempt to not lose herself in the massive shoes of motherhood. She was clearly not ready for children, and the doll is a symbol of her womanhood independent of motherhood. She has lost hers to her children, and so she tries to regain it and nurture it through Elena’s, even if this is at Nina’s detriment.

The ’Daughter’ in the title The Lost Daughter is not just Elena, who literally gets lost on the beach. It is Leda – she does not identify with the role of ‘Mother’, she is still just her own mother’s daughter, lost and alienated. And I’m not saying Leda is a poor victim, or an admirable person, either - she is a flawed, selfish person, but no one really is perfect. As a society we tend not to forgive mothers for being a flawed person, and this film challenges this perception perfectly. I think that we can all find bits of ourselves, our deepest-rooted fears, and our mothers in this beautifully made film. Maggie Gyllenhaal is so successful in adapting this story and generating so much relatability because she is honest in her portrayal of women and this particular taboo.

‘Mother’ is a loaded word. A mother creates life and simultaneously destroys her own. Mother is a gift and a burden. I often find myself resenting my mother for making me the person that I am today. But The Lost Daughter forces me to forgive her, to look past the ‘mother’ and everything that word represents, and see the troubled, complicated woman she is - to recognise we are both just prisoners of the patriarchy, and to fight it together.