[FILM]
THE LOST DAUGHTER
Reality check: Olivia Colman’s Greek getaway offers up some home truths.
★★★★
DIRECTOR Maggie Gyllenhaal
OUT NOW (CINEMAS) / 31 DECEMBER (NETFLIX) CERT 15 / 121 MINS
CAST Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley
PLOT Leda Caruso (Colman) is a professor not far off 50, trying to have some downtime on a solo holiday in Greece. She finds her present upended and past unearthed after the arrival of a mysterious family — in particular Nina (Dakota Johnson), an enigmatic and unpredictable young mother.
THE AIR IS salty and the sun is warm, but the fruit bowl is rotting. Something is very wrong for 48-year-old professor Leda (Olivia Colman), who is trying to relax on her “working holiday” on an idyllic Greek island but can’t shake the ghosts of her past. These aren’t just vague, hypothetical fears or regrets — the things haunting Leda are made of her own flesh and blood, with memories of her family weighing down her bones. In her directorial debut, the always impressive actor Maggie Gyllenhaal tackles Elena Ferrante’s visceral 2006 book to tell a story of female experience that relishes the ugly, uncomfortable parts of being a mother, daughter, lover, stranger. Womanhood is an experience so often romanticised both in fiction and real-life public encounters — but Gyllenhaal makes a point of shattering the illusion.