The Lost Daughter reviews
Re: The Lost Daughter reviews
"Not every person is cut out for the task of motherhood" is the subject of two recent films - The Lost Daughter & Parallel Mothers. The women in these films reminded me of Joanna Kramer played by Meryl Streep in Kramer vs Kramer.
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Big Magilla
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Re: The Lost Daughter reviews
Colman has a line near the end where she says that she and her husband are divorced.
Re: The Lost Daughter reviews
Interesting.
I have to admit that what I enjoyed about the movie is that feeling of confusion. I never got the feeling from Colman's performance that she and her husband are together now (and I credit Buckley and Jack Farthing for that - the way they shape the characters in the flashback scenes is terrific) - indeed I wasn't confused by that at all (if Gyllenhaal states they are together, I'd agree with Tee about the vagueness adding up to less). Because of that, that Leda's on vacation (on her own) so far from home doesn't read as confusing to me at all. Her kids are adults (25 and 23, as we are told more than once) after all. I was also completely fascinated whenever Dakota Johnson was on screen, which is what made the "wait for the reveal of the deception" scene less bothersome to me. I was curious if the film would push the kinship these two share into thornier territory - Johnson is clearly performing it as such. Indeed, all the performances worked terrifically for me and I'm hoping it gets in for ensemble at SAG.
I will say some of questions Tee has are the same ones I did (Harris' response to the doll, Leda's catalytic action). One question I had that didn't get resolved until the very end was whether or not Bianca is actually still alive. I was fully prepared to accept Leda was just making up that her daughter was alive (the ages, etc) until we actually heard both her daughters speak on the phone at the end, though, so I probably went too far.
I have to admit that what I enjoyed about the movie is that feeling of confusion. I never got the feeling from Colman's performance that she and her husband are together now (and I credit Buckley and Jack Farthing for that - the way they shape the characters in the flashback scenes is terrific) - indeed I wasn't confused by that at all (if Gyllenhaal states they are together, I'd agree with Tee about the vagueness adding up to less). Because of that, that Leda's on vacation (on her own) so far from home doesn't read as confusing to me at all. Her kids are adults (25 and 23, as we are told more than once) after all. I was also completely fascinated whenever Dakota Johnson was on screen, which is what made the "wait for the reveal of the deception" scene less bothersome to me. I was curious if the film would push the kinship these two share into thornier territory - Johnson is clearly performing it as such. Indeed, all the performances worked terrifically for me and I'm hoping it gets in for ensemble at SAG.
I will say some of questions Tee has are the same ones I did (Harris' response to the doll, Leda's catalytic action). One question I had that didn't get resolved until the very end was whether or not Bianca is actually still alive. I was fully prepared to accept Leda was just making up that her daughter was alive (the ages, etc) until we actually heard both her daughters speak on the phone at the end, though, so I probably went too far.
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Big Magilla
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Re: The Lost Daughter reviews
I raised similar issues in my review in the Latest Movie You Have Seen Thread, to wit:
Colman's performance is great. Colman's performances are always great. Buckley is a chameleon. She's wonderfully different in everything she does. Here she looks and sounds so much like Colman that when the film goes into one of its many flashback scenes it takes a moment to realize you're looking at her and not Colman. It's uncanny. The scenery is phenomenal, it's the Greek Islands, after all.
But the story drags. With that title, you would think it would be about Colman discovering a daughter she abandoned as a child, but no it refers to a little girl who wanders off for a few minutes, who is found by Colman who returns her to her mother but keeps the doll the girl is frantic for losing for no rational reason except to give the story a little suspense.
Written by a pseudo-anonymous female Italian author, it's a highly feminist work in which the men are all weak jerks, and the women are all strong, if flawed, who are better off without them.
Johnson and her "boisterous" family are typical American tourists as seen through the eyes of European natives. They are from "Queens", don't you know, were everyone is perceived to be loud and annoying. Colman has emigrated to America but being a high-class Brit, she lives and teaches in Cambridge, Massachusetts "outside of Boston" because she is a woman of culture.
Paul Mescal, Jack Farthing, and Oliver Jackson-Cohen are wasted in the key male roles, and the less said about Peter Sarsgaard and that horrible Rasputin style beard, the better.
And what was Ed Harris doing in this picture as an emigrant from who knows where with a 50-year-old daughter, making her two years older than Colman's character, who seems to be trying to do his own version of Zorba the Greek?
Colman's performance is great. Colman's performances are always great. Buckley is a chameleon. She's wonderfully different in everything she does. Here she looks and sounds so much like Colman that when the film goes into one of its many flashback scenes it takes a moment to realize you're looking at her and not Colman. It's uncanny. The scenery is phenomenal, it's the Greek Islands, after all.
But the story drags. With that title, you would think it would be about Colman discovering a daughter she abandoned as a child, but no it refers to a little girl who wanders off for a few minutes, who is found by Colman who returns her to her mother but keeps the doll the girl is frantic for losing for no rational reason except to give the story a little suspense.
Written by a pseudo-anonymous female Italian author, it's a highly feminist work in which the men are all weak jerks, and the women are all strong, if flawed, who are better off without them.
Johnson and her "boisterous" family are typical American tourists as seen through the eyes of European natives. They are from "Queens", don't you know, were everyone is perceived to be loud and annoying. Colman has emigrated to America but being a high-class Brit, she lives and teaches in Cambridge, Massachusetts "outside of Boston" because she is a woman of culture.
Paul Mescal, Jack Farthing, and Oliver Jackson-Cohen are wasted in the key male roles, and the less said about Peter Sarsgaard and that horrible Rasputin style beard, the better.
And what was Ed Harris doing in this picture as an emigrant from who knows where with a 50-year-old daughter, making her two years older than Colman's character, who seems to be trying to do his own version of Zorba the Greek?
Re: The Lost Daughter reviews
These... are good points.Mister Tee wrote
The rather bigger issue I had is simply being deprived of all kinds of information I'd like to have known, to fill out the narrative. Why is Leda on this vacation so far from home? What's her relationship with her daughters and, oh yeah, the husband? (SPOILER TERRITORY, SUCH AS YOU CAN SPOIL SUCH A FLIMSY STORY) She says she left for two years, but that was close to two decades ago -- what were the years after her return like? Was the husband part of the arrangement, or just the kids? Is the marriage still ongoing? In the present-day scenes, why is she so seemingly determined to fend off almost any kind of human interaction (except briefly with Paul Mescal)? She acknowledges being a selfish person, but her orneriness feels like it goes beyond that. And, of course, why does she do what she does with the pilfered object?
That last is the sort of the thing the film might get away with leaving up to audience interpretation, if it were the only vagueness in the narrative. But since it's only one in a long list, it feels like Gyllenhaal just doesn't believe in explicit narrative -- that she's bought into a "the less I tell you, the more meaningful it is" philosophy. Even in the flashback scene where Leda's announcing her departure, Gyllenhaal has the music soundtrack drown out the words -- as if the specifics of the break-up don't interest her much; she's just giving us the mood. In fact, a whole lot of the movie goes the "mood" route. It feels like it's 15 minutes in before any kind of encounter happens (the birthday cake scene with Calista) -- everything up to then is just watch Leda walk around. There's the sort-of engagement with Dakota Johnson, which is clearly thematically important, but, like most of the story-elements, fizzles out -- as if any kind of high-level drama would be beneath the film. And what's the deal with Ed Harris seeing the object -- the thing everyone at the place has been screaming about -- and barely reacting? It's more "you'll have to figure out for yourself what this means." I have to acknowledge, this is my least favorite kind of filmmaking -- while less can be more if the proper balance is achieved, there is a point on the scale where less is simply less, and for me this film too often navigates in such territory.
"How's the despair?"
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Mister Tee
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Re: The Lost Daughter reviews
I really would have liked to go for this movie -- I'm very partial to the people involved -- but multiple issues got in my way.
The first may be specific to me. I really don't like movies that center on some form of deception, where much of the running time amounts to waiting for the (predictable) embarrassment and outrage when that deception is uncovered. It turns out this movie doesn't do all that much with the eventual uncovering of that deception -- it happens in a perfunctory way, and doesn't add up to a lot -- but that doesn't offset the hour or so I spend dreading that moment of discovery.
The rather bigger issue I had is simply being deprived of all kinds of information I'd like to have known, to fill out the narrative. Why is Leda on this vacation so far from home? What's her relationship with her daughters and, oh yeah, the husband? (SPOILER TERRITORY, SUCH AS YOU CAN SPOIL SUCH A FLIMSY STORY) She says she left for two years, but that was close to two decades ago -- what were the years after her return like? Was the husband part of the arrangement, or just the kids? Is the marriage still ongoing? In the present-day scenes, why is she so seemingly determined to fend off almost any kind of human interaction (except briefly with Paul Mescal)? She acknowledges being a selfish person, but her orneriness feels like it goes beyond that. And, of course, why does she do what she does with the pilfered object?
That last is the sort of the thing the film might get away with leaving up to audience interpretation, if it were the only vagueness in the narrative. But since it's only one in a long list, it feels like Gyllenhaal just doesn't believe in explicit narrative -- that she's bought into a "the less I tell you, the more meaningful it is" philosophy. Even in the flashback scene where Leda's announcing her departure, Gyllenhaal has the music soundtrack drown out the words -- as if the specifics of the break-up don't interest her much; she's just giving us the mood. In fact, a whole lot of the movie goes the "mood" route. It feels like it's 15 minutes in before any kind of encounter happens (the birthday cake scene with Calista) -- everything up to then is just watch Leda walk around. There's the sort-of engagement with Dakota Johnson, which is clearly thematically important, but, like most of the story-elements, fizzles out -- as if any kind of high-level drama would be beneath the film. And what's the deal with Ed Harris seeing the object -- the thing everyone at the place has been screaming about -- and barely reacting? It's more "you'll have to figure out for yourself what this means." I have to acknowledge, this is my least favorite kind of filmmaking -- while less can be more if the proper balance is achieved, there is a point on the scale where less is simply less, and for me this film too often navigates in such territory.
Sabin mentions, in talking about the film in the Review thread, that he wishes we had some females around to respond to this film, and I agree with that, for a specific reason. Back sometime in the 80s -- I believe in relation to a Claire Peploe film -- Pauline Kael pondered the idea that having a significant number of women directors might change our idea of what constituted a story: that women might opt less for the sharp edges that characterize very-male-centric narratives. She acknowledged she worried that it would lead to rather hazy storytelling, and I wonder if something like this is what she had in mind...but she certainly was open to a style that veered away from the bluntness of too much of studio Hollywood. I'm willing to wonder if it's simply my male-orientation that gives me trouble with this approach -- and I'll own up that some other highly-praised female directors (Claire Denis, Jane Campion as I mentioned not long ago) leave me cold in much the same way. On the other hand, I don't think Kathryn Bigelow, Greta Gerwig or Emerald Fennell work in this mode at all, so I'm not sure a simple male-female dichotomy is at work. But I'd like to hear the matter addressed.
Olivia Colman does manage to hold the film together, simply by the strength of her presence; she has a couple of terrific scenes. But I can't help wondering what heights her performance might have risen to had the film not played so elusive throughout -- if the dramatic elements had been engaged at a more front-and-center level.
The first may be specific to me. I really don't like movies that center on some form of deception, where much of the running time amounts to waiting for the (predictable) embarrassment and outrage when that deception is uncovered. It turns out this movie doesn't do all that much with the eventual uncovering of that deception -- it happens in a perfunctory way, and doesn't add up to a lot -- but that doesn't offset the hour or so I spend dreading that moment of discovery.
The rather bigger issue I had is simply being deprived of all kinds of information I'd like to have known, to fill out the narrative. Why is Leda on this vacation so far from home? What's her relationship with her daughters and, oh yeah, the husband? (SPOILER TERRITORY, SUCH AS YOU CAN SPOIL SUCH A FLIMSY STORY) She says she left for two years, but that was close to two decades ago -- what were the years after her return like? Was the husband part of the arrangement, or just the kids? Is the marriage still ongoing? In the present-day scenes, why is she so seemingly determined to fend off almost any kind of human interaction (except briefly with Paul Mescal)? She acknowledges being a selfish person, but her orneriness feels like it goes beyond that. And, of course, why does she do what she does with the pilfered object?
That last is the sort of the thing the film might get away with leaving up to audience interpretation, if it were the only vagueness in the narrative. But since it's only one in a long list, it feels like Gyllenhaal just doesn't believe in explicit narrative -- that she's bought into a "the less I tell you, the more meaningful it is" philosophy. Even in the flashback scene where Leda's announcing her departure, Gyllenhaal has the music soundtrack drown out the words -- as if the specifics of the break-up don't interest her much; she's just giving us the mood. In fact, a whole lot of the movie goes the "mood" route. It feels like it's 15 minutes in before any kind of encounter happens (the birthday cake scene with Calista) -- everything up to then is just watch Leda walk around. There's the sort-of engagement with Dakota Johnson, which is clearly thematically important, but, like most of the story-elements, fizzles out -- as if any kind of high-level drama would be beneath the film. And what's the deal with Ed Harris seeing the object -- the thing everyone at the place has been screaming about -- and barely reacting? It's more "you'll have to figure out for yourself what this means." I have to acknowledge, this is my least favorite kind of filmmaking -- while less can be more if the proper balance is achieved, there is a point on the scale where less is simply less, and for me this film too often navigates in such territory.
Sabin mentions, in talking about the film in the Review thread, that he wishes we had some females around to respond to this film, and I agree with that, for a specific reason. Back sometime in the 80s -- I believe in relation to a Claire Peploe film -- Pauline Kael pondered the idea that having a significant number of women directors might change our idea of what constituted a story: that women might opt less for the sharp edges that characterize very-male-centric narratives. She acknowledged she worried that it would lead to rather hazy storytelling, and I wonder if something like this is what she had in mind...but she certainly was open to a style that veered away from the bluntness of too much of studio Hollywood. I'm willing to wonder if it's simply my male-orientation that gives me trouble with this approach -- and I'll own up that some other highly-praised female directors (Claire Denis, Jane Campion as I mentioned not long ago) leave me cold in much the same way. On the other hand, I don't think Kathryn Bigelow, Greta Gerwig or Emerald Fennell work in this mode at all, so I'm not sure a simple male-female dichotomy is at work. But I'd like to hear the matter addressed.
Olivia Colman does manage to hold the film together, simply by the strength of her presence; she has a couple of terrific scenes. But I can't help wondering what heights her performance might have risen to had the film not played so elusive throughout -- if the dramatic elements had been engaged at a more front-and-center level.
Last edited by Mister Tee on Sun Jan 02, 2022 3:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: The Lost Daughter reviews
I was going to say Maggie Smith... then I found out that Maggie Smith was 35 upon her Oscar win.Mister Tee wrote
And Olivia Colman -- who was the last middle-aged actress to jump to prominence like this and stay aloft? (Judi Dench, you might think, but she was practically senior citizen by the time Mrs. Brown happened.) Those of us who'd watched Broadchurch and The Night Manager knew how good she was, but The Favourite sent her to another realm, and she seems determined to stay there.
I have no idea but over the last two years (since The Favourite), she's been nominated for:
- Six SAG nominations (3 ensemble, 3 individual performances)
- Three Golden Globe nominations, One win.
- Three Emmy nominations.
- One Oscar nomination.
This showing is somewhat inflated due to her continuing presence in The Crown and Fleabag, but that doesn't change the fact that it looks like we're going to go through another awards season where she across the board shows up at all of the above.
Yeah, we're looking at a remarkable career in the making.
"How's the despair?"
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Mister Tee
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Re: The Lost Daughter reviews
This will be interesting to watch. Ferrante is very much a populist writer (my mother's read lots of her books), but these reviews indicate Gyllenhaal has made something of an art film.
And Olivia Colman -- who was the last middle-aged actress to jump to prominence like this and stay aloft? (Judi Dench, you might think, but she was practically senior citizen by the time Mrs. Brown happened.) Those of us who'd watched Broadchurch and The Night Manager knew how good she was, but The Favourite sent her to another realm, and she seems determined to stay there.
And Olivia Colman -- who was the last middle-aged actress to jump to prominence like this and stay aloft? (Judi Dench, you might think, but she was practically senior citizen by the time Mrs. Brown happened.) Those of us who'd watched Broadchurch and The Night Manager knew how good she was, but The Favourite sent her to another realm, and she seems determined to stay there.
The Lost Daughter reviews
Raves. Best Director Maggie Gyllenhaal?
The Best Actress race is shaping up in the last few days. Olivia Colman, Kristen Stewart, Penelope Cruz...
https://www.indiewire.com/2021/09/the-l ... 1234661946
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/s ... a-ferrante
https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/t ... 235054843/
The Best Actress race is shaping up in the last few days. Olivia Colman, Kristen Stewart, Penelope Cruz...
https://www.indiewire.com/2021/09/the-l ... 1234661946
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/s ... a-ferrante
https://variety.com/2021/film/reviews/t ... 235054843/
"How's the despair?"