The Lost Daughter directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, starring Olivia Colman

Saw the reviews and going to watch it this weekend. Colman was heart-breaking in Landscapers on HBO so I'm expecting a lot from her performance. I wouldn't object if she gets another Oscar and gets to give another Oscar-winning acceptance speech. She's a scream.

Would she really have gone to see “last time I saw Paris” at an out door cinema in Greece sitting on those uncomfortable looking chairs. That seemed so random to me.

I'm eager to see this (LOVE OLIVIA!) but that NY Times review was so odd - felt like she didn't like the film but couldn't quite come out and say that. Anyway, I'll watch it tomorrow.

I just finished and I was very disappointed. (SPOILER AHEAD....SORT OF).....

What are we supposed to make of her by the end? That she's a sociopath? What is the significance of the title? (Is Leda the actual 'Lost Daughter', she's lost because she can't emotionally connect?) ... I almost feel the movie should be called The Lost Chapter; the chapter that either has the plot revelation we were all waiting for, or the explanation of why we should care about these people.

I can't really fault the performances. I think this is the first movie I've ever seen featuring Dakota Johnson. I thought she was luminous. Hers was the only character I had any sympathy for by the end, (well, except maybe for that very last action she took!).

Is Olivia dying of blood loss on the beach at the end?

In the book, Leda dies at the end.

R6 If you don't mind, list some of the differences between book and movie. Thanks.

I love how unrepentantly self-centred the main character is.

Maggie Gyllenhaal would have been better directing herself in the lead role, I think, but she’s a mite too young. Colman was very good. Even though I thought when reading the novel the lead character was supposed to have a tad more sexual power.

It seems pretty clear to me she did die. That Godfather orange came out of nowhere and she fantasised about her daughters reconnecting with her.

Also the score totally ripped of It's a Man's Man's Man's World.

It could have been a great movie, but the cinematography and the editing were so disjointed and so scattering. Maggie tried too hard to be edgy but she came up so wobbly. Olivia was too cold and detached even for the hot climate of Greece.

Maggie should go learn more of filmmaking from the maestro if she wants to makes a movie about ordinary people whose lives permeated with something sinister and foreboding. Asghar Farhadi could teach her a thing or two how this kind of movies should be made.

PS . Dakota and Jesse and all supporting actresses were great in this movie. Olivia was acting in the same mode as she always has done.

This movie would put me off having children if I was a Frau. It’s up there with the novel of We Need To Talk About Kevin.

Gyllenhaal was going to set in on the Jersey Shore prior to Covid, which explains the extremely trashy American family.

Dakota Johnson took acting honours, closely followed by the ever watchable Ed Harris in a nothing of the . She gave impression that she suspected Colman took the doll and was delicately/aggressively drawing her out. But she just wanted a to talk to a kindred angry mom use her flat as a love nest.

Also, I assumed Colman’s character had an untreated brain tumour, hence her fainting spells, Callie’s remark that the doll thief serves brain cancer and her accident at the end.

This part of a reviewcracked me up:

[quote] And it’s in Colman’s expressive face that Gyllenhaal rests the sophistication of Ferrante’s writing. The actress masterfully depicts the complexities, contradictions, and the unspeakable awkwardness of being a woman alone in public. But there comes a point where Leda ceases to be an astute intellectual finding solace in loneliness and in discrete acts of madness. She becomes a gauche spectacle, parading a distinctly English inability to handle her emotions, particularly sexual ones, around the island like a fool

So true about about a certain kind of English person and sexual jealousy!

But at least you get a glimpse of Jack Farthing's dong!

I thought it was odd and fascinating . It drew me in and made me anxious feeling the dread and anxiety of the main character. All kinds of odd details. Dakota Johnson is really growing on me as actress to watch as I dismissed her early on and now see her becoming more and more interesting . I don’t want to give up any details but I do feel that the ending was up for interpretation and I do have my own feelings on the end. I think it did bring up how many women really feel once they have children and end feeling trapped , suffocated and feeling guilty for having those feelings.

Hi R15,

Have you seen A Bigger Splash? I loved Dakota in that!

I wanted to love it, but there was moment after moment where I kept saying to myself “I don’t buy this. This is bullshit.” I never believed that the characters would behave like they did during many scenes in the movie. It wasn’t the motherhood thing, which I got, but it was everything from the beach confrontation to the movie theater scene to the scene with at car. There was something about each of those scenes that made me think that this isn’t how people act at all, and even if you could justify it as being from Lena’s skewed perspective, the movie never earns it.

There was an artificiality about everything that suggested to me that it’s a bad adaptation that didn’t convey the nuances of the source material in the right way. I had such high hopes for it, but this is easily my most disappointing movie of 2021.

Maggie Gyllenhaal takes herself VERY seriously. This sounds like the kind of thing she would get involved with. She and her husband should do a remake of The Sound of Music. I'd pay good money to see him play Liesl.

Leda was quite sexually immature.

Ed Harris chats with her over drinks, she crisply asks him to leave, then slinks over to seductively interior his meal before running out.

She asks Paul Mezcal to dinner, when he flirts with her she doesn’t know how to respond.

Ed Harris asks her to dance she blushes asks like a virgin on prom night.

Colman’s sitcom roots do, I think, the film a disservice in these scenes.

Is Leda British in the book? I wonder if it was a change made for the casting of Olivia Colman?

Really disappointing! But then I've never been a mother. I got the pain of motherhood but all of the characters were so unpleasant and unlikeable. It was all too grim.

What was the scene about with the doll spitting up something red like blood?

And then the later scene with the doll spitting up a red worm?

Was that all some kind of symbolism or simply something realistic? I really didn't get it.

What kind of woman would put on a pristine white silk dress to travel after being stabbed in the stomach with a 4" hat pin?

Yes r16 I did see it as I am a big fan of Mathias Shoenarts. I though it was very good. Dakota seems to be making interesting choices in her career after have been in that horrid 50 Shades thing.

How can Peter Sarsgaard not be a cocksucker? . Asking for a relative.

I just want Colman to win a Best Actress Oscar again so we get another speech. Better her than the horrors (Stewart, Kidman, Gaga, ad nauseam) being pushed.

You for got McDormand, r26, who is sure to be a contender.

Frankly, I could easily see Olivia winning again for this performance.

Thought it was painfully boring and pointless.

Loved Dakota - she’s compelling no matter what part she plays.

Olivia did the best she could. Just boring as fuck. I didn’t care what happened to any of the characters and thought they were all equally off-putting.

Felt validated about my decision to never have children watching the flashback scenes of her and the bratty daughters. Ooooof.

[quote]I just want Colman to win a Best Actress Oscar again so we get another speech

Bite your fucking tongue.

She already has one she didn't deserve.

R29 look, Lady Gaga, you can't act.

[quote]I wanted to love it, but there was moment after moment where I kept saying to myself “I don’t buy this. This is bullshit.” I never believed that the characters would behave like they did during many scenes in the movie.

My reaction as well.

Colman was excellent as usual, and Dakota Johnson and Paul Mescal were very good too. But Leda's "relationship" with Ed Harris was formless and contradictory, and the bad symbolism (a hatpin in the woman's stomach? really?) turned me off.

I really couldn't get what was going on in her relationship with the Ed Harris character. Were they supposed to be sexually attracted to each other? Why oh why is it so ambiguous? He could have been cut from the film and I wouldn't have missed him.

A friend who loved the film (though he loves everything!) posted on FB how brilliant Gyllenhaal is because she allows the audience to make up their own minds....but I call it lazy directing and writing.

My mother died when I was 9. She was a cold bitch, paid no attention to us kids. She wasn't physically abusive. She preferred to ignore us. Thank God our father was a wonderful person. He never criticized our mother after her death but we all had memories of her and what a crappy mother she'd been. He would only say that she had found being a mother very hard.

When Colman describes herself as an 'unnatural mother', I think that's the description I would make of our mother. And I think she recognized in Dakota Johnson another unnatural mother.

R27, based on the precursors thus far and history, the nominees will be Stewart, Colman, Gaga (NYFCC + Globe nod + high profile film), Cruz (Venice + LAFCA), and Chastain (she has won a few key lower tier critic awards). McDormand isn't showing up anywhere and Macbeth isn't the time of film to catch on late in the game. Maybe Kidman sneaks in, but, that would only be for a nomination.

Stewart will probably win (unfortunately). Maybe Gaga can knock her off, but it's doubtful. It's basically a lose/lose situation. I don't think Colman has a chance. I'd be delighted if she won though (or Cruz). I wouldn't even mind Chastain winning (if it meant blocking Stewart/Gaga).

All I'm saying: prepare for the worst.

I think it’s more complex than what you describe based on your experience r33 this unnatural mother idea is based on a very old fashioned notion. . I think like the movie itself it showed the ambivalence of motherhood especially in the modern era we live. How you can love your children with all your heart and still want to escape them because they hold you back from personal freedom. I am not a mother/ frau but I base what I am saying on my experience as a caregiver who does what I do out of duty and love but is anguished by the constant needs and desire to escape . Nothing is all black or white. No one is all good or bad . They were not the worst mothers both of them as evidenced by many of their acts of loving and caring even while in internal conflict with their maternal duties. I did not find the characters unappealing or unlikeable . I found Leda to be very likable , neurotic , bitchy and also caring. I think that could describe many a datalounger . Don’t you think ?

Nicole Kidman will get in. Also McDormand is very much in the running. She is beloved in the academy.

KStewedPrunes will get snubbed. If they snubbed JLo in Hustlers, they're not giving a nom to this turkey.

R36, the problem is that this year, Stewart has won Best Actress with mid-tier critic groups like Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth and lower-tier groups like Detroit, Indiana, Nevada, North Texas, Philadelphia, Portland, SE, St. Louis, DC, and both Phoenix contingencies. All of those wins are backed up by Globe and BFCA nods. She is also--by playing a Brit directed by a respected South American director--a lock for a BAFTA nod. Unless you can name an actor with that slate of citations who ended up missing (an actor who was doing an accent and playing a real-life person), the likelihood of Stewart missing this year is close to zilch. I write that with much sadness.

They'll snub Kidman or Chastain before her. Spencer was received slightly better than the Ricardos and The Eyes of Tammy Faye (and House of Gucci).

Not the best advertisement for careerist moms. My mother was nuts in some ways, but she was devoted to me despite all her problems and I’m grateful for that. The older I get, the higher my regard for good mothers and fathers. Yeah, maybe we can’t have everything we want, all at once.

R37 she was horrible!!

I just watched this last night. So strange! Why did she still the damn doll?

Maggie wrote the movie, too.

McDormand has THREE Oscars, two of them recent - which is ridiculous.

Is the rain a metaphor? If so, what did it mean?

McDormand has FOUR Oscars, since she produced Nomadland.

And it is ridiculous.

[quote]I really couldn't get what was going on in her relationship with the Ed Harris character. Were they supposed to be sexually attracted to each other? Why oh why is it so ambiguous? He could have been cut from the film and I wouldn't have missed him.

The scenes with him and the scenes where Mescal flirts with her is where I think Colman was miscast. She doesn’t have sexuality on screen, she seems like a frightened vicar’s daughter. A chic, self-assured woman like a younger Caroline Goodall or Kristin Scott Thomas would have been handled the material with more soul. And of course there are any number of American or European or Australian actresses could could have done the same.

R43 the rain signified the tears she could not shed, because she was narcissistic and selfish. IMHO

Maxine Peake could have made a better Leda if Maggie was looking for a 45-46-year-old Brit actress.

R45 his character was free and uninhibited and she was awkward and did not know how to show love. I also believe he was in on it with the other family. I believe they knew she took the doll, because he ratted her out. I think his character provided depth and showed that no matter what kind of circumstances placed in front of her she was a sociopath. She was awkward and it did not stem from her hatred of her own children, but a very flawed woman.

I have a question maybe R45, (or anyone), can answer for me. Is Olivia Colman beautiful?

On two occasions, Leda is either mentioned as beautiful or she is told that directly. I think Olivia Colman is a great actress and has lots of wonderful qualities, but beautiful? With those buckteeth and other odd facial features? Is it me and my perception that's way off?

That's the thing. If, at least in my eyes, if Leda was played by someone like a younger Catherine Deneuve or Jessica Lange or even Mia Farrow, someone enigmatic, then the response to her from the other characters would make more sense. People do get hypnotized by beauty and it decreases their judgement, even straight women by other women. In the world I live in, if somebody was sitting on a beach who looked like Olivia Colman, no one would pay any attention to her.

The film reminded me a bit of “swimming pool” and “under the sand” the role seemed tailor made for a younger Charlotte Rampling.

[quote] out. I think his character provided depth and showed that no matter what kind of circumstances placed in front of her she was a sociopath

She wasn’t a sociopath at all. She was a woman who did and said exactly as she pleased to contrast her past as woman who fanaticised being alone. Her daughter broke her doll, so she takes another doll out of spite. It’s not the sign of insanity or lack of morals, it’s her choosing to act beyond from the bounds of propriety and pleasing herself only and entirely - keeping her chair on the beach, telling a pregnant women very honestly that children are hard rather than bon mots about what a joy there area. It’s mean, but it’s not crazy.

I really liked it. And Greece was beautiful. Dakota looked so old, she’s only 32.

Just finished it.

Wonderful small little film. I had my issues with it. With a lot of it, but wonderful and moody nonetheless.

Colman was great as usual, but Dakota Johnson absolutely blew me away. Which feels weird saying out loud.

I wonder why she's no getting more Oscar buzz.

[quote] In the world I live in, if somebody was sitting on a beach who looked like Olivia Colman, no one would pay any attention to her.

Agreed. She’s not ugly, she’s kind of cute and jolly looking with those sad eyes and curls, but she’s not in the least striking.

And it’s not prettiness. Even a jolie laide person like a young Glenn Close you could imagine attracting some interest - and, at that age, she did - because she has a powerful presence and acts open to sexual possibility. And remember, Leda didn’t have men who own age hovering as potential love interests - she had one old enough to be her father and young enough to be her son. So there’s an inbuilt kinkiness or subversion to these potential relationships - and Colman isn’t the actress to exude that.

I’m not a Jessica Chastain fan but she would have been good. To be honest, dozens of actresses would have eaten it up. As Leda I could see had Kate Winslet and Florence Pugh as Leda, Keeley Hawes and Ella Purnell, Penelope Cruz and Antonia Desplat, Gwyneth Paltrow and Elizabeth Olsen, Thandie Newton and Alexandra Shipp.

I bailed half way through because I thought everyone was a creep. I also didn’t buy the situations- the flirty beach boy goes to dinner- the apology and instant friendship on the beach? In fact who gets this close to fellow vacationers? The mother knowing who called (caller ID only works when you have the name and number in your phone). Essentially in a dark film I have to be able to identify or at least muster some empathy- I couldn’t, with anybody. Was Ed Harris’ character supposed to be the make version of Olivia’s? I can return to it (Netflix) but doubt I will. Also I can’t stand vague illness in a story line- it’s a trite manipulation.

R46 Thanks, what about the pinecone, what did that symbolize?

The pinecone symbolised the world encroaching in on Leda’s ivory tower. That it’s a natural object and not, say, a beer can flung by a gust of wind or an item thrown by a delinquent child indicates the primal essence of things - it is the natural order that humans cannot escape other humans and mothers will always be mothers.

Yes, the pinecone, the rotting fruit, the bug on the pillow. It all screams "you can't escape NATURE!" Pretty clunky and obvious if ya ask me.

I thought the actress who played young Leda was good.

[quote] The mother knowing who called (caller ID only works when you have the name and number in your phone).

Dakota saw her running away after canoodling with the Irish guy, so she figured that Leda hung up the phone because of that. Dakota’s phone would have showed the unknown number which Leda rang from.

I realize now I was expecting Jessie Mueller, and her to break out in Carole King songs, I have no idea who Jessie Buckley is???

Oh and the octopus that were "swimming an hour ago" or whatever and now about to be on a plate. NATURE!

Jessie Buckley had a major role in the last season of Fargo and is currently playing Sally Bowles opposite Eddie Redmayne in the new West End Cabaret. She’s really good.

I absolutely hated Jessie Buckley in that British country music movie they were pushing like mad a few years ago but she’s good in this.

I assume all of these issues and corny symbolism are in the original source material. Blame Elena Ferrante, not Maggie and certainly not Olivia!

Olivia was clearly cast because of her ordinariness. Very purposely a woman who would be ignored on a beach....until she was brazen enough to not give up her space and then apparently save the life of a little lost girl. These other actresses like Kristin Scott Thomas, et. al. would have made for an entirely different movie, not the one Maggie wanted to make.

R64 Does Elena remain in seclusion so people don’t descend upon her and rip her to shreds because of her sub par literary allusions?

R56 I feel like Leda’s emotions were wrapped very tight like a pine cone. She had so many layers to her personality. In order for her to become close to anyone, many difficult prickly layers had to be peeled away for her authentic sense to shine through, and that was never going to happen. A pine cone is difficult to peel its layers and very prickly, as was Leda. IMHO.

Johnson = nepotism. She has the acting range of a board.

The literary illusion of the violent pinecone isn’t exactly subpar, as much as the poster upthread asking what the pinecone symbolised is weird because it’s perfectly obviously what it symbolises.

R67 I would have said that before, but she is actually very good in this.

Nah, Olivia brought nothing to it, r64. She’s not as bad as she was in The Crown, though.

R68 that is how I viewed the pine cone. I also disagree with the nature analysis upthread. Nature is about death and being reborn.

Did anyone else think the pine cone was viciously thrown at her by Oliver Jackson-Cohen, not Mother Nature?

R72 yes, there was a very deeper level to the pine cone. What do you do when your frustrations become to much? You throw things… it was like throwing her wrapped up hardened emotions right back at her.

[quote]Did anyone else think the pine cone was viciously thrown at her by Oliver Jackson-Cohen, not Mother Nature?

I did, r72, and the film makes clear that Leda senses someone is following her in the woods just before she is injured. I don't buy that a the force of falling pine cone could cause such a prominent bruise.

I'm about 2/3 through.

It's a good moody movie.

I am OK with the glacial movement of the plot but I do think the movie is considerably longer than it needs to be.

The academic conference scenes feel totally authentic, from the boring readings of boring papers to nearly empty rooms to the reckless behaviors of nutty scholars.

This concludes my 2/3-way-through review.

The mix of nationalities was jarring and unrealistic. An Englishwoman who says she lives in Boston and who is a professor of Italian, goes on vacation to Greece and oddly runs into a big family of trashy Americans? The film should have been about an Italian professor vacationing in Italy and confronted by a family of her fellow Italians of a low-class variety. It was a sort of Death in Venice variation.

Oliver Jackson-Cohen’s whole styling reminded me of these guys

How come Olivia Colman and Dakota Johnson are getting so much glowing press and hardly anyone is even mentioning Jessie Buckley? She has as much screen time and twice the dialogue Colman has.

Jesus Christ, this thing was horrible. There was no story at all, just all horrible people. There was no point to it. The direction was atrocious; it was all unnecessary close-ups. I hated Power of the Dog as well, but this was far worse.

I, for one, found the flashback scenes with Buckley the worst parts of the film. I didn't need them to explain the behavior of the Colman character.

Sarsgaard was effective as the hipster literary academic douche. I wanted to yank that beard off his smug face.

R80 me, too.

I haven’t gotten to the end yet, but I’m assuming one of her daughters is dead, possible from her neglect or own hand even if she telling people what their present day ages would be.

Is it true that the film was originally going to be shot on the Jersey shore until Covid hit?

I wonder if Oliver Jackson-Cohen had a larger role that was cut down in editing? I would certainly have enjoyed seeing more of him than Ed Harris and Peter Saarsgaaaaard.

Jessie Buckley looked so familiar so I went through her IMDB to see where I'd seen her before and I hadn't seen anything she'd done. Weird.

Finished it.

I expected something more by the end. But...well, it happened, didn't it?

[QUOTE] I haven’t gotten to the end yet, but I’m assuming one of her daughters is dead, possible from her neglect or own hand even if she telling people what their present day ages would be.

You assume wrong.

Well, r88, how do we know one of her daughters hasn't died? Maggie Gyllenhaal would ask you to decide for yourself.

I thought it was well acted but the stuff about the doll did not work for me. It seemed ridiculous and unbelievable.

It also seemed ridiculous and wholly unbelievable that the child wouldn't be placated by a new doll. I mean.....c'mon! Has Maggie never had children, is she not a mother??

Utterly pretentious twaddle. Louis B Mayer would be appalled.

Frances is not getting nominated. That film is not getting any traction, besides the mandatory nomination for Denzel.

I thought the scenes with Buckley broke the rhythm of the movie. Here daughters were brats I don’t blame her for leaving.

Dakota has the same genes as her mother ..:Melanie aged badly

R86 She resembles young Julia Ormond and young Kate Beckinsale

Saw it today, didn’t like it. Found it sooo boring, many dull scenes. I like arty films but this didn’t have any interesting plot. Good acting though. Olivia is always great, Dakota looked beautiful and it was nice to see Ed Harris acting again( Haven’t seen him lately in any movies).

Ed Harris and and a decent moisturizer look like they never met.

I like Dakota but the dark hair was very aging and she looks like she’s in her late 30s.

Dakota added nothing to the film. Her role could've been played by any other white woman her age in a bad black dye-job. Jessie Buckley on the other hand was superb. I couldn't believe how much she looked and sounded like Olivia Colman. Likewise Paul Mescal added very little to his scenes and had zero chemistry with Johnson or Colman.

[quote]I wonder if Oliver Jackson-Cohen had a larger role that was cut down in editing?

His role was tiny in the book; if anything, it was expanded and made slightly more 3D. Unlike Mescal, he actually did manage to eke out some chemistry with Johnson and Colman both.

R96 Beckinsale and Ormond were beautiful when young. Buckley's very plain.

I was going to watch it this week, but reading the comments I don’t think I’ll bother. I have a summer house on the island that this was filmed last summer.

I liked it but agree it would have been better with someone else as Leda. I loved the woman who played Young Leda, though.

I watched it last night, and it's one of those movies that sticks with you. It left me confused and frustrated, but I keep thinking about it and what it all meant.

The movie definitely could have used some editing. Olivia Colman was great in it, but I didn't buy that the other characters kept calling her "beautiful" and that more than one character thought she looked younger than 48. Geez, I thought she looked like she was at least 55. I thought Dakota Johnson was good overall, but she didn't really bring the drama in her final scene with Colman's character. I couldn't keep my eyes off the beautiful Paul Mescal. God, he was sexy! But I didn't buy for a second that he would flirt with Colman's character.

Although the scenes with Colman and Ed Harris were touching, he really didn't serve a purpose in the film, other than to maybe represent what would lie ahead for Colman if she continued to live as she did.

*SPOILER ALERT*

I think Colman's character is dead at the end. Through most of the movie, she was dressed in black or other dark colors. At the end, she's in white, like she's become an angel. Her demeanor also goes from depressed to glowing and smiling, like the weight of her difficult life has finally been lifted.

I also didn't understand why she didn't just tell Dakota Johnson that she found the doll and that she didn't actually take it. Was she so painfully honest that she had to tell the truth about it?

It was a bit boring. I didn’t get why the trashy Americans were so menacing and why everyone was so scared of them. I assume Leda wasn’t because she was a bit sociopathic? I don’t know. I didn’t hate the movie, but it seemed to stay just below the surface.

R105 I also didn't understand why the men in the American family were always intimidating Olivia Colman. Was it because they were still pissed off from the first day when she wouldn't give up her spot on the beach?

All the crap about the doll ruins the movie.

I can't remember now if it was Callie or Nina who flattered Leda and expressed unbelief of her age but my take was that both Queens ladies were so impressed (almost intimidated) by Leda's stance in not moving her place on the beach which then tripled when she found the little girl. They were actually in awe of Leda and just complimented her looks as a way of showing their awe.

But in any case, the problem with this film is that it leaves so many questions unanswered about....everything...I find it ultimately more frustrating than intriguing.

I thought Dagmara Dominczyk, who played Callie, was very good. She played a brassy, pushy Queens frau to perfection.

And in real life, that bitch is getting Patrick Wilson's cock on a regular basis.

Has anyone here read the book?

I worked with Dagmara years ago when she was still doing theater (before she was married to Patrick) and she was a real doll....utterly delightful...and she loved her gay boys. Gorgeous woman!

[quote] Louis B Mayer would be appalled.

And his taste was unassailable!

In the book, she is rushed to the hospital in the beginning and then wakes up in the hospital at the end. On the phone, she tells her daughters, “I’m dead.”

So it’s unclear in the book and movie whether she is dead at the end.

I think she is alive but dreaming at the end though it's supposed to be open ended. She's been able to heal and forgive herself and wants to move forward with her life and reconnect with the part of her that did love her daughters. But the end isn't supposed to be literal. Where did the orange come from?

R110 I had no idea there even was a book. I would be interested in reading the book to see how to correlates to the movie.

Oh yeah, the orange and the unending peel. Another fatuous symbol in a pretentious symbol-laden film.

R96 Please. She looks like the young Dale Dickey!

I assumed she is dead in the movie because a) she was stabbed and b) an orange just appears out of nowhere in her hand.

So, r118. are you saying her walk to the water in her white dress is a fantasy?

No, I think she walks to the water and then collapses and dies.

Maggie G. probably wanted it to be ambiguous like the book.

Fuck ambiguity!

Loved it!

Could getting stabbed once with a hat pin really kill you?

I think if Leda had been played by more of a beauty, like Juliette Binoche, it would’ve made the dynamic between her, Cali and Nina more interesting.

I first thing I said after it ended was "What the fuck did I just watch?"

I thought from the car accident, R124.

R124 My thought was that she was already ill with something. Remember the scene in the storye where she nearly passed out? And the scene with Ed Harris where she wasn't feeling well and had to lie down? The hat pin may have prompted an infection that accelerated her death.

I got the feeling this was kind of a riff off Death in Venice. She was dying and went on vacation as a last hurrah.

Leda was an intradimensional traveler who transcended time. Those weren't flashbacks. She was jumping between different timelines in the sequence we witnessed. She behaved strangely, couldn't empathize or relate to others and stole the doll because she is trying in vain to understand human beings,

She expired in the end because interdimensional beings who split themselves among different timelines at once as she did cut up their life forces. They can't retain life energy while they are living in different ribbons of time, and so the life was bleeding out of her throughout the story.

The hairpin was a coincidence. She would have died anyway.

She told her daughter she was "very much alive" in the end because she was being reincarnated in the present moment as her daughter, and she smiled because she was seeing daylight as she was being pulled from the womb.

I thought all this was clear through the orange peel symbol. No?

I’m glad I wasn’t the only one that got all that, R130.

R131 It was pretty obvious to me as soon as I heard a Gyllenhaal made the movie FOR OBVIOUS REASONS.

I thought the first half was pretty gripping in a subtle, atmospheric way, but the long, tedious flashbacks killed the groove in hour two. Ed Harris was wasted. And there wasn't enough Dakota, who was excellent, or her even better sister.

R133 Yes, the constant flashbacks seemed to ruin the momentum for me. I thought they were overused.

I hated the flashbacks, too. I didn't think young Leda looked or sounded like middle-aged Leda and that was distracting and annoying.

R135 Yes. Leda's teeth grew about 3 inches between young adulthood and middle age.

I'm so glad there are others who also disliked the flashbacks and felt they ruined the pacing.

I'm so glad there are others who also disliked the flashbacks and felt they ruined the pacing.

Why did they make a point in one of the flashbacks, when the hiker couple was leaving, for the female hiker to correct her about the male hiker having sons, not daughters? It stuck out to me.

That entire hitch hiker scene was perplexing and unnecessary.

It was jarring that multiple characters referred to Olivia Colman as beautiful.

R141 Agreed, that in this movie she was not as attractive as the story might suggest. One reason the story seemed out of kilter (other than stealing the doll was just nutty on its face [with worms emerging]), was the main character needed to be more magnetic. Colman was frumpy almost to the Kathy Bates level.

She has been "beautiful" in other movies... she can "play" beautiful, but may have passed the shelf-life with this one.

I think it’s funny that I believed Olivia Coleman when she played the Queen of England but not when she says, “I’m a professor.”

[quote] and she loved her gay boys

You’re making me hate Dagmara. And you.

[quote] Colman was frumpy almost to the Kathy Bates level. She has been "beautiful" in other movies... she can "play" beautiful, but may have passed the shelf-life with this one.

No she’s hasn’t played beautiful. Cute, quirkily attractive, but no one with self-possessed beauty.

[quote] I think if Leda had been played by more of a beauty, like Juliette Binoche, it would’ve made the dynamic between her, Cali and Nina more interesting.

Or at least something the relative equal of Dakota and Dagmara.

I didn't like this film but I really don't get all the criticism of Olivia's lack of physical beauty. There was nothing in this film that required her to be even merely pretty. There's a reason the "flirty" scenes with Mescal and Harris go nowhere physically and there needed to be a plainness to Leda to create a tension with the two beach ladies.

[quote] there needed to be a plainness to Leda to create a tension with the two beach ladies.

I disagree. There is already attention because Leda is a childless, book toting academic.

If the women are impressed by Leda’s gumption for not backing down over the beach chairs or imagining “I want to be like her”, that makes sense if she were of a comparable physical attractiveness.

The reality is that most people who congregate in big families and buy into those traditional modes of femininity and masculinity would think of crisp, independent Leda her as a middle aged, bucktoothed loser with dykey hair who can’t keep a man the instant she acts contrary to their desires.

R76 Huh? How is the mix of nationalities "jarring and unrealistic"? Have you seriously never met an academic from one country, who has moved to another country in order to work... who has taken a vacation to a country that they are neither from nor study? Seriously? Is the concept of a passport too much for you?

[quote]I didn’t get why the trashy Americans were so menacing and why everyone was so scared of them.

It's implied, although very subtly, that they're mafiosos.

R147 I think the only reason people are distracted by the supposed beauty are the several references people make (the angry woman on the beach, the younger guy who wants to boink in her house) to it. They literally tell her she is beautiful and looks much younger than her age.

I haven't commented on it because I don't like to comment on most people's appearances, but it threw me every time they said these things because Leda falls somewhere between plain and frumpy, and most particularly, she doesn't look younger than her age.

When the woman on the beach said it, I thought it was an interesting tension between obviously false flattery and a strange kind of patronization of Leda by that woman and took it as that and moved on. But when the young man said it, I paused the movie to look up Colman's real age and I was very surprised to see she is still in her 40s. I have assumed the actress is well into her 50s until now.

So then I wondered if maybe Colman looking older than her real age is an inside joke between her and Gyllenhaal and they incorporated it to make the mood even stranger or for some other subversive reason. Anyway, I did find it very distracting.

To the point of the young guy flirting with her at dinner, I was thrown by that dynamic at first because Leda is so plain and certainly not styled to "get her groove on," but then all the flattery seemed to have been undermined by his asking for the key to her place to fuck the young mother—so it was false flattery not to get in Leda's pants but to get close to her and use her for something she had. If the movie were a story submitted to an MFA workshop, I might have read it as a thematic parallel to Leda feeling used up by her family and then being attractive to the writer she had an affair with only because of the writing she had to offer and not because she was a great beauty or anything.

I feel pretty certain we are not *really* meant to see Leda as a sultry older seductress, but rather to interpret the flattery of everyone on her vacation as different people trying to use her in different ways, and certainly Leda would know the flattery was false unless she were a total megalomaniac with no objective sense of her appearance.

I really don't get the relationship with the family, though. More than anything else, it does make the movie come across as an MFA student project because it's just such a wonky and seemingly symbolic type of relationship. She was obsessed with watching them on the beach like some kind of spy but everything we saw was totally mundane family activity. (Wasn't it? Or did I miss something?) Yet they did come across as crass and dark and strange and threatening but not for any reason that was explained. She refused to move and that angered them, but all of them seemed to have been as fixated on her as she was on them for reasons that in the real world would not have emanated from her refusing to move on the beach. Then the young guy warned her not to get involved with this 'dangerous' family (?), and then the one seemingly 'good one' stabbed her—with a hairpin (?!)—and she maybe died, maybe didn't die.

It feels like student writing, which isn't necessarily bad, but it feels like it was made to be moody for the sake of being moody and not necessarily with any coherent ultimate point. Darren Aronofsky's "Pi" had a similar feel to me, as have some other movies that seem like student projects rather than fully realized films, like expressions of a philosophy that someone is trying to convey to an audience without having fully worked out what that philosophy is.

[quote]It feels like student writing, which isn't necessarily bad, but it feels like it was made to be moody for the sake of being moody and not necessarily with any coherent ultimate point. Darren Aronofsky's "Pi" had a similar feel to me, as have some other movies that seem like student projects rather than fully realized films, like expressions of a philosophy that someone is trying to convey to an audience without having fully worked out what that philosophy is.

I’ve not seen Pi and I’m not an Aronofsky fan but the author, Elena Ferrante, writes about female rage. My favourite of her novels is Days Of Abandonment.

The it as a miniature into a sort of kind of woman who revels in not doing what a married, middle-academic wife and mother is NOT supposed to do: holiday away from her family, not be responsive to sexual overtures and when she decides to flirt doing so awkwardly and gormishly, being unamenable to fellow holiday makers, being brutally honest with an older pregnant woman, stealing a child’s doll because it reminds her of the destructiveness her own brat kids.

The family made sense to me, because that’s the sort of thing that happens when you go on holiday in a small place and you see people you don’t necessarily like and you might l kick the wheel of their hire car in irritation: they’re EVERYwhere and you don’t know if they saw you.

On the trivial side: There was a snatch of Judy Garland singing "Hello, Bluebird" at one point in the film. Scarcely noticeable, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out why it was there.

[quote] The it as a miniature into a sort of kind of woman who revels in not doing what a married, middle-academic wife and mother is NOT supposed to do

Say what?

I couldn’t figure out the American family. I initially thought that maybe they were intended to be European travelers, but they had to change it for Netflix to avoid accusations of bigotry. I just can’t see a family from Queens or Jersey being that rude and intentionally hostile so many times. Sure, they might be rude, but openly hostile like when Colman’s character approached the rental car? No, not to a middle-aged woman.

But in the original book they were Neapolitans. I’m not familiar with Italy, so I don’t know if there is any significance to that.

Colman’s looks were a distraction as well. When she stated her age of forty-something and the other women said she looked younger, I assumed they were fucking with her. I realize that she is playing her real age (or is she?), but she looks older. Even for a “real woman.” Especially from the neck down. Physically, she was an inappropriate and distracting casting choice.

[quote] I just can’t see a family from Queens or Jersey being that rude and intentionally hostile so many times. Sure, they might be rude, but openly hostile like when Colman’s character approached the rental car?

Their and her origins were also disorienting. She's obviously by her speech British, said she was from Cambridge, clarified that's Cambridge, Mass., and the woman told her she assumed she was from New York or New Jersey. I also assumed she was aggressively fucking with her, because you'd have to be a moron or hearing impaired to assume Olivia Colman speaking like Olivia Colman is from New Yawk or New Joizey.

Did anyone recognize Dagmara from that Jennifer Anniston/ Walburger movie , Rockstar ? She played a trans groupie. I thought she was very striking and wondered why she hadn't been in more movies after that. She gained weight but I think is still very attractive. I hope this give her career more life. I thought she was excellent at portraying a certain kind of woman.

She's also been in Succession

Yeah, I thought the Americans were just fucking with her when they were calling her beautiful, and telling her she looks young. Either that or this movie was made in the Twilight Zone.

R156, she also clarified that she was from Leeds, Shipley (in the UK) when Cali asked where her people were from. As someone else mentioned, that’s not uncommon for an academic.

[QUOTE] She's also been in Succession

Thank you!!! I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out where I’d seen her before.

It was said the Americans had ties to that local community for the last 300 years. And the Brits are notoriously badly behaved abroad.

She was in the Kinsey biopic years ago when she was young and thin. She played the Timothy Hutton character’s wife.

[quote]SPOILER ALERT

.

.

If Maggie stuck with the book's ending, the movie would be much much more memorable.

[quote]Physically and emotionally wounded, Leda packs her things and starts to make her way homeward. As she departs, she receives a call from her daughters, who ask how she’s doing. Leda’s response is the final line of the novel: “I’m dead, but I’m fine.”

The "LOST DOLL" signs posted all over the resort was when I decided this chick-flick is trash.

Dagmara made her film debut as the female lead opposite cray-cray Jim Caviezel in 2002's The Count of Monte Crisco.

R130 wow I hadn’t thought of that. Now it makes sense.

I thought so, R167. I can only assume those who didn't get it were distracted with their phones during the movie. It's a pretty straightforward plot!

Yeah, it’s pretty obvious now. I guess most will only pick it up on a second viewing.

R130 Please tell me you're joking.

R170 No, what do you mean by joking?

It's all right there on the screen. Watch the orange peel scenes carefully and it'll all make sense.

Gah. I watched this piece o trash and instantly came to DL for some affirmation or soothing or explanation.

I appreciate posters who try to explain the book.

But after viewing I just walked away in angry befuddlement as to why a Netflix-endorsed flick about an angry old frigid unattractive awful mum got goo goo eyes from Ed Harris, some hot Irish kid, and New Yorker gals. And then the old broad steals a doll.

Such an absurd cryptic vanity project for Maggie and cast.

Was Ed Harris character trying to fuck her? And she was either uninterested or oblivious?

Do we think he told the family that she had the doll?

Yes the Ed Harris character was hoping to have a little romance with her. But no I don't think he told the family anything - Nina seemed very shocked by her reveal.

Dakota Johnson was not remotely believable as a Queens Greek girl. Somehow OJC managed to be more convincing and he's a British Jew.

Was Dakota supposed to have been Greek? For some reason, I thought she married into the family. She was a lot more subdued than the other family members, and I thought it was pretty clear that her husband was the blood relative. If he was and he married her, Dakota's character doesn't necessarily have to be Greek.

Were Callie and Toni (OJC) sister and brother or did Callie also marry into the family?

A Barbie doll might have been a stronger doll symbol.

R176 I got the feeling Callie and Toni were brother and sister.

R175 - uh, I didn’t dye my hair black just for the hell of it, you know.

My stupid husband insists that in the film, Leda had actually killed one of her kids, that's what the flashback when she was looking for her kid was about. And then Leda dies in the end, and is talking to her dead daughter because she too is dead.

He doesn't budge when I tell him how the book is different.

R180 Which does point to one of the film's strengths. So much of popular entertainment is simple, painted in primary colors, calculated with and for the lowest common denominators. We passively receive stimulation. Our minds are not asked to pay attention to ambiguity, to bring discernment to most films.

There's a difference between sloppy incoherence and artful puzzles. Gyllenhall has given us some of both, I think.

But more of the former, less of the later, r181.

[quote] Yes the Ed Harris character was hoping to have a little romance with her. But no I don't think he told the family anything - Nina seemed very shocked by her reveal.

I think the men probably suspected her of stealing the doll. Not because they have any proof, but because they thought Leda was a bitch. We the audience are supposed to wonder if Dagmara and Dakota are testing Leda to see if she had it, but it turns out they weren’t, it was Leda’s own neuroticism.

Leda is a Karen. It was gratifying when Dakota exploded on her and called her a cunt.

This take on the movie helped me understand it in a straightforward way. There’s a lot of symbolism this movie requires you to pick up on, as well as key pieces of dialogue. The movie isn’t really that deep. It’s about the guilt a mother feels over not really wanting to be a mother.

I watched it and didn't like it. Colman looks as if she's in her early 60s, not 47. If you think about actresses liike JLO who are five years older than Colman, she's looking saggy and grim. Dakota was exquisite as always but she's such a nepotism baby that it's hard to take her seriously. The only appeal for me was the Greek scenery.

Dakota is a star fucker too. She'll drop ageing Chris Martin in 2025 when Coldplay split up and go after Harry Styles or someone similar to be her husband and father of her children.

Very stupid movie, really makes no sense. If shes a professor, I'm a college dean. I expected it to be really good, was i suprised.

I think it's an overstatement to say Olivia looks like she's in her 60s. She looks like every other naturally aged late 40s British white woman. That English rose complexion tends to age like banana peels.

I also interpreted Callie remarking on her beauty as a class marker. Not that she thought she was a great beauty but that there was something different and elegantly simply/studious about her. She must've looked exotically continental to a Queens mafioso clan.

What amazes me is how quick some reviewers were to describe Lena as a sociopath.

Sociopath? No way. She's obviously deeply conflicted about having left her daughters even though she doesn't doubt that it was the right choice for her. I thought the film made it very clear that part of the reason she left was her deeply isolating and unsupportive circumstances (and husband).

How is Leda a Karen? I’d say that Callie, the pregnant, character was the Karen. At least when she asked Leda to move.

I got closet lesbian vibes from Callie. She seemed to be flirting with Leda, calling her beautiful and complimenting her age and telling her that Callisto means "most beautiful."

[quote]it threw me every time they said these things because Leda falls somewhere between plain and frumpy, and most particularly, she doesn't look younger than her age.

Same. It was insulting to Leda, and to us, the viewers, in a weird, condescending way.

I wonder if that was the point, that they were condescending to her or trying to be passive aggressive.

^ I also took it more as false flattery or condescending

I share the sentiment, although (to be nitpicky) I'd say patronizing, not condescending.

I liked when Olivia Coleman said she wasn't gonna move from her lounger.

Leda is not Karen such a simple , small minded thing to say. Of course you liked Leda being called a cunt that’s was all you took from the movie. Nothing else just Leda is a cunt. 🙄

Of course, Callie was being condescending (and bitchily insincere) to Leda with her compliments. And Leda saw through it. I can't believe there are those here who would interpret it otherwise.

I was not clear why Nina's and Callisto's Italian-American family (which seemed to be Mafia) were vacationing regularly in Greece, of all places.

Also, since Will knew the family were bad people (as he told Leda), why would he be having an affair with Nina at the risk of his life?

And as angry as Nina was that Leda had the doll, she still would have been grateful Leda had found her daughter a few days before and had sympathized with her about how hard mothering is, so it seemed unlikely to me she would have stabbed Leda with the hatpin.

As a professor of literature who is the Colman's character's age, I can tell you that big-deal American literary academics (as Peter Sarsgaard was supposed to be):

1) almost never extemporize when they deliver lectures at conferences;

2) are not thought clever when they do (especially when they make lame-ass jokes about the first syllable of Pierre Bourdieu's first name and the second syllable of Paul Ricouer's name); and

3) do not sport Smith Bros. grey long beards if they are trying to pick up women at conferences.

R202 Hardly a babe-magnet, but did you ever see Leslie Fieldler in his heyday? I remember his riffing extemporaneously, intoxicated with his own "brilliance"....

[quote] [R202] Hardly a babe-magnet, but did you ever see Leslie Fieldler in his heyday? I remember his riffing extemporaneously, intoxicated with his own "brilliance"....

That would have been decades before the conference where Sarsgaard spoke (which was supposed to take place @ 2005). Things changed a lot in the mean time... academics became far more professionalized in the later decades of the 20th century.

[quote]I was not clear why Nina's and Callisto's Italian-American family (which seemed to be Mafia) were vacationing regularly in Greece, of all places.

Because they were Greek, not Italian. In the beach conversation Callie has with Leda, she tells them that they have family and history in the area going back hundreds of years. I actually took this as a low key threat/power play on Callie's part as well. To back up the point that she was patronizing/falsely flattering Leda by fawning over her beauty, she then adds that her own name means MOST beautiful.

[quote]Also, since Will knew the family were bad people (as he told Leda), why would he be having an affair with Nina at the risk of his life?

I thought the whole Will subplot was pretty pointless, especially since Nina had no chemistry with Will at all, but the film made it clear that it was a poorly thought out life decision on both Will's and Nina's part, showing that Nina was much unhappier in her circumstances than she was letting on. Though she didn't seem unhappy in her marriage at all other than the one spat they had about the kid.

[quote]And as angry as Nina was that Leda had the doll, she still would have been grateful Leda had found her daughter a few days before and had sympathized with her about how hard mothering is, so it seemed unlikely to me she would have stabbed Leda with the hatpin.

If a woman "found" my lost child and then revealed she'd been keeping her doll for no reason as my family desperately looked for the doll and as she witnessed my child having constant meltdowns and mentally torturing me with it for days while she allowed me to confide in her, I would assume she was completely looney tunes and possibly dangerous.

R204 Not so sure. Fielder died in 2003. And other superstar academics in the last couple decades still hold forth with delight at the sound of their own mental synapses firing without notes.

And as someone in and around and over and through The Academy for 50 years, I'd challenge the notion that academics are "more professional" now. A PowerPoint does not a professional make.

[quote] [R204] Not so sure. Fielder died in 2003. And other superstar academics in the last couple decades still hold forth with delight at the sound of their own mental synapses firing without notes.

That's not been my experience, and I'm a literary academic myself and have been regularly attending academic conferences for thirty years.

European superstar academics sometimes extemporize, but usually not American ones. Fiedler was an exception (as is Camille Paglia), but he was pretty much considered a dinosaur when he retired in the mid 1990s.

[quote] If a woman "found" my lost child and then revealed she'd been keeping her doll for no reason as my family desperately looked for the doll and as she witnessed my child having constant meltdowns and mentally torturing me with it for days while she allowed me to confide in her, I would assume she was completely looney tunes and possibly dangerous.

And then you'd stab her in the stomach with a giant hatpin? I doubt it.

R208, they never said they’d stab her with a hatpin. They just said they’d think she was dangerous.

I thought Leda confessed taking the doll because Nina was compromised by being at Leda’s apartment. How could she say “that crazy woman had the doll at her apartment the whole time!” And then the family would wonder how she knew that. Mutually assured destruction.

Karens are dumb hoes not professors for fuck's sake

Leda hugely disapproved of Nina having the affair whilst still pretending to adore her husband. Maybe she was jealous but she wanted to upset Nina, and succeeded.

But why did EVERYONE tell Leda that she looked so much younger than she did? She looked very postmenopausal. Not just the giant pendulous breasts but she had that old lady ass and dowager’s hump. If she’d looked like JLo or Gwyneth Paltrow, I could see her being mistaken for younger than 48. She looked 58 to me.

And she kept needling Callie about having had previous pregnancies. What was that all about?

'She looked 58 to me.'

Same, but in the book they keep flattering her and telling her she looks younger so that might be why. If you keep the weight off and have a bit of Botox you can still look young at 47 and beyond. I genuinely thought Colman was 60 plus because her face is so saggy. That guy she cheated on her husband with was super fug too with that gigantic biblical beard. The husband was hotter.

They should've just left out the "you look so young!" part with Olivia cast in the lead role. She looks at least 10 years older than her actual age. Maybe if they had cast a younger, more attractive actress, that whole schtick would have worked. But it definitely was jarring with Olivia as the protagonist.

Dakota is 32 and they had her playing a 22 year old, but that worked because she is still slender and lissom with plenty of hair. Olivia has that thinning post menopausal hair and just too much weight to look good on screen. Three years ago she was cast to play the Queen when the Queen was in her 50s and 60s, which says a lot.

[quote]That guy she cheated on her husband with was super fug too with that gigantic biblical beard. The husband was hotter.

The professor was Peter Saarsgard, Gyllenhall's husband. There were reasons he attracted her: 1) hubby couldn't get hard, was no longer into her 2) Saarsgard sought her out, was appreciative of her brain, her talent.... and she was narcissistically hungry for attention.

'The professor was Peter Saarsgard, Gyllenhall's husband.'

Does he have that awful beard in real life? Poor Maggies. There are better looking Saarsgards around.

R217 No, the beard was for the film. But even without the beard, he's no prize. Then again, neither is Maggie.

A woman so self obsessed who chased fame and pleasure would not have let herself run to seed. We'd be seeing a JLo type not Olivia Colman who is as dowdy as 47 gets.

Maggie is another one who looks much older than she is.

I watched this last night and didn't like it. It had a similar affect on me like Power of the Dog. I feel MG tried too hard to be artsy and esoteric and as a result made a bland, slightly annoying film. I found the scenes with Olivia and both Ed Harris and Paul Mescal to be awkward, and not in an intentional way.

I can understand Maggie casting Olivia in the lead role, because that part required a solid actress who could really convey the sadness, despair, guilt, and shame the main character carries with her.

But Maggie should have then excised any reference to Olivia being a young looking, sexy woman, regardless of how Leda was described in the book.

It was like a French film in feel but those films rely on the main characters being easy on the eye.

Although Ed Harris' face now looks like a leather saddle that's had too many asses on it, his own ass still looked pretty damn good in those jeans.

Maybe her problem was hormonal.

I can’t believe I’m three years older than Olivia Colman. I can’t believe it. She HAS to be shaving years off her age.

R226 Probably not. The British don't age well.

Whoever said it reminded them of “Swimming Pool”… I agree.

R224 I was interested in his face, how it's aged. No, the skin isn't in great shape, but bones.... bones... If you are old, and have the bone structure, stay thin so the form registers.

How many times must it be said in this thread that Callie and Nina only "flattered" Leda about her looks and age because it was a form of passive aggressive condescension used to humiliate and one-up Leda? But Leda was on to them and never truly warmed to them.

It may be subtle but it's clearly the intention. I think most women viewers would get it before men, who are clearly oblivious to that kind of nasty mean girl interaction.

R230 But Will and Ed Harris both commented on Leda's youthful looks, so it wasn't just the women flattering her.

Maggie Gyllenhaal directed her own husband in an explicit sex scene? A power move.

I would put big money on the bet that MG puts on a big strap on and pegs PS

I don't know why I know, I just do....

[quote] A woman so self obsessed who chased fame and pleasure would not have let herself run to seed. We'd be seeing a JLo type not Olivia Colman who is as dowdy as 47 gets.

No you’ve got it wrong. Chasing pleasure isn’t necessarily being a libertine or trying hard to look hot for boys which is what JLo does.

Leda’s DGAF hair and lack of social niceties is pleasing herself. Making good natured small talk with fellow tourists and acquiring a feminine, girly appearance is what women do to who are mothers and wives and part of a huge family.

r231. Will and Ed Harris both commented on "Leda's youthful looks" because they are wired as men to think that's what she wants to hear. At least in the intimate situation they each find themselves in with her. It's not about her actual looks.

I was really perplexed by the casting when the young guy asked Leda out and gushed about her appearance until his tone shifted suddenly and he warned her about the "bad people." Then I figured, oh, he manipulated her to get her alone so he could warn her, and the movie manipulated me to question the writing and now I admire the character's savvy, knowing how to isolate Leda to warn her. Then he hit her up for a key to Leda's apartment so he could boink the pretty young mommy and I thought, oh, wow, this guy is just as creepy as everyone else and I fell for his good-guy act just as Leda did. So I kind of respected how it was done, but part of me also feels like the double fake-out is one too many and a bit too overtly manipulative (toward the audience) given that this movie purports to be akin to literary fiction rather than an endlessly twisty pulp story like Mare of Easttown.

I think the movie's obvious strength is ambiance and its greatest flaws are inconsistent writing and directing and too much reliance on vague mysteries to make the story worthwhile. That's why I say it feels like an MFA student film. Most of us in my creative writing graduate program wrote 'ambiance' stories like this that emphasized language and well-realized characters but never quite satisfy the need for a compelling and understandable plot. It's always been my greatest weakness as a writer.

The screenplay opens by describing Leda as elegant. And her description of the development of her breasts in that cringy conversation with Will is reversed - in the screenplay she says she started out with big breasts and they got small after kids. That could be a typo, but going from big to small (it happens) makes a little more sense given that she also mentions considering implants. It’s unlikely she would have seriously considered implants as a young PhD candidate - she has her kids in her early 20’s. And a woman who doesn’t care about her appearance doesn’t get implants. And she apologized to Callie and Nina for not moving on the beach immediately after they tell her she looks young, why would she do that if they were fucking with her?

Nope, it isn’t on purpose. She was miscast.

Oops, forgot the link

From the book:

“ In a few months I regained the slender body of my youth and felt a sensation of gentle strength; it seemed to me that my thoughts had returned to their proper speed. One night I looked at myself in the mirror. I was forty-seven years old, I would be forty-eight in four months, but by some magic years had fallen from me.”

R235 Ed Harris' character was clearly attracted to her and wanted to get in her pants.

“ On the trivial side: There was a snatch of Judy Garland singing "Hello, Bluebird" at one point in the film. Scarcely noticeable, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out why it was there.”

Between the Judy Garland scene and the couple’s unsatisfying sex scene, the viewer can conclude the husband is possibly gay. Knowing she’d married a gay man would leave Leda with complex feelings of betrayal, distrust, dissatisfaction, disappointment, resentment, and loneliness.

If a woman’s perspective is welcome… I was struck by Leda’s incredulity that Callie was a first-time mother at 42. She kept hinting that she didn’t believe Callie. Usually women who wait that long to start trying (34?) do so because they have careers. Callie didn’t give any indication of being a careerist. I think she was envious that Callie had had years of freedom and couldn’t quite believe that she squandered that child-free time.

Leda seemed to desire intimacy with other women more often than she seemed to want it with men. The hitchhiker and the woman at the drunken dinner with the bearded academic. It seemed almost sexual to me, but it’s ambiguous. She could have fucked Lyle and Will, but she seemed to enjoy the knowledge that she could have.

And when Nina complimented Leda’s bathing suit, I laughed. It was a matronly black tank, the last thing any woman would compliment about another woman.

Speaking of “matronly”, that’s exactly what I thought about Colman. I know there was supposed to be something sensual/sensuous about her, but it didn’t happen for me. The young Leda touching the academic’s chest hair was about the only time I saw her that way.

Didn’t Lyle reject her advances after they ate octopus together? She put her head on his shoulder and he told her she was feeling unwell. She hadn’t otherwise given any indication of feeling ill, unless I missed something while viewing that scene. His motive for being there became muddled to me. It’s as if he had a bigger role in the film that ended up on the editing floor. There were gaps in his character’s arc.

R243 Agreed. Everything indicated that Harris was very motivated to have sex with her. Then, they are alone, after dinner in the apartment, she leans into him, puts her head on his shoulder, and he looks like he wants to run away.

Complex character? Ok. But sometimes "mystery" is just "sloppy character development"...

R239 / R241 In case you want to use a block quote, here's the format code to do it:

square left bracket + type the word quote + square right bracket, followed by a space and then the quote.

A lot of people here delight in others not being able to figure it out, so I just thought I'd let ya know.

Interesting, r241, you may be on to something. But boy! that's subtle.

[quote] A lot of people here delight in others not being able to figure it out, so I just thought I'd let ya know.

Did I do it right, R245?

Yeo, R247!

I have to say, if anything, I like this film for the discussion it's created!

R241, good point. I vaguely remember that, but didn’t think the husband was gayish. But i wouldn’t argue about it, either. It’s a fair assumption, given what we were shown.

R241 R246 Yep, that was my immediate conclusion with his "can't get hard" ... and her response to it (stopping them, walking off) is the behavior of a wife who knows on some level her husband is gay. Simply an ED problem would be, "oh honey, it's ok"... or so I might conclude.

R250 "not gayish"... hmmm, so many ways to be gay, in what way was he disqualified?

[quote] A woman so self obsessed who chased fame and pleasure would not have let herself run to seed. We'd be seeing a JLo type not Olivia Colman who is as dowdy as 47 gets.

You must not know many college professors. Their lives have little to do with "fame and pleasure," and almost none of them look like JLo.

Interesting that when Bianca calls Leda, complaining about her hair being RUINED by a hairdresser she’s never used before, Leda asks “Does your dad know someone?” Like, why would the middle-aged straight academic be able to suggest a colorist for his daughter?

If he were GAY he might.

Kate Winslett is only two years younger than Colman but far more attractive, and would have been better in the role. Colman has looked matronly since her mid 30s with that enormous shelf of a bosom.

'Leda asks “Does your dad know someone?” Like, why would the middle-aged straight academic be able to suggest a colorist for his daughter?'

In the novel it's implied that he's gay which is why he never wanted sex with Leda

R254 It's bizarre that people are complaining about a 48 year old mother of two, looking matronly... she IS a "matron."

The issue isn’t so much Colman’s looks or age. It’s her physical reticence. Helen McCrory, for instance, looked very similar to Colman and wasn’t anyone’s idea of a beauty but you could imagine Nina being impressed by her strength.

Why are people insisting that women like Callie/Nina would be impressed , for any reason, with a woman like Leda though?

Because that’s what Nina said in the movie.

R258, I think they might be impressed that Leda was a woman *alone* who stood up to their patriarch. She didn’t fold even when the entire group wanted her to move. They couldn’t comprehend that a single woman could decline their advances and do it so politely. She actually said “no thank you” the first time one of the men asked her to move. That made me LOL.

There IS that attitude toward single women, women who move around the world unescorted and without the protection of males or a group. The whole family was a mob, literally. The occupation of the beach by their mob was halted by a genteel lady with a book and a quiet voice.

^^ that was something that stood out to me, as a bit of a loner.

This FAMILY came and took over the beach. They weren’t malicious, but just the sheer number of them was intimidating. They were a clan who might have squabbled amongst each other, but they present a united front and afford protection to each other as well. For better or worse. The nice thing is you’re never alone. The drawback is you’re never alone.

Gawd help me for bringing it up here, but it made me think about Meghan Markle and her dealings with the British Royal Family. If you’re used to making your way in the world alone, it’s difficult to understand the clannishness of a large close family. And vice versa.

As annoyed as I was with this movie, I’ve been thinking about it a lot.

[quote] A lot of people here delight in others not being able to figure it out, so I just thought I'd let ya know.

R261 Yes, it's one of those movies that stays with you. So that says something about what Gyllenhaal was able to do.

I think it was perfectly polished, due to Gyllrnhaal's excellent industry connections, but inscrutable, due to her lack of ability. That's why we're discussing it. It wasn't good. It looked good.

The bulk of this thread has discussed whether Olivia Colman looks young/attractive enough for the attention and compliments she received.

The movie wasn't good.

Unrealistic, uncomfortable to watch, creepy people, creepy plot, dialogue that would never happen in real life. Had to give up when Olivia Colman blathered on and on about her daughters' breasts to Paul Mescal (as if he would eagerly have dinner with her in the first place???). People don't behave like this. And if they do, other people respond negatively. He would not have sat there listening with interest to her freaky musings.

The best thing to do when a rowdy group like that shows up is to move along and find a quieter spot on the beach, otherwise they will annoy you all day.

The original title was Suicide by Hatpin, but it was determined to be too triggering.

R266, exactly. It bothered me that the gangster husband from Queens would bring his trashy sweatpants- and flip-flip-wearing wife an oversized straw hat as a present. And that she’d wear it! He suddenly developed some taste? In real life, that woman would have said “What the fuck is this? Are we going to the Kentucky Derby? Where’s my real present, you fuck? I wanted that Fenty perfume!”

A lot of actor-turned-directors get tripped up in their desire to prioritize moody performances and 'tone' over the plot and exposition. It appears that Gyllenhaal suffers from this problem. Who needs narrative structure when you have a lot of famous actors set against a Greek island backdrop? The meaning is surely in there somewhere. It will take care of itself, right? It will come through amongst the orange peels and wormy dolls and Olivia Coleman's sad, Huckleberry Hound face staring off longingly into the middle distance....

The problem with adapting a novel into a film is that they really are different mediums. A novel is often just an inner monologue- interior, oftentimes illogical and always impressionistic.

On film, 'impressionistic' can often read as scattered, thinly written or badly edited. In this case, all three.

It's a visual medium and once we got settled on the island, the scenes plays out like this:

1.) Present day Leda on the island. People are intrigued by her but she can't or won't engage in a meaningful way. 2.) Leda sees Nina with her kid; the kid hangs on her like a deadweight and she and Leda exchange Knowing Mom Side Eye, which triggers: 3.) Woman On the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown- a flashback of when Leda was herself a young mother.

Rinse. Repeat.

It goes around, not forward. Which would be fine if it was just another arty film about island ennui. But it's not- it's about a mother that left her children. That's not just a feeling. It's a story.

She should have told it.

ITA @ R266. No way would a hot young guy show any interest in a frumpy middle aged woman....unless she's paying for it. And the in no universe would a sane, middle aged woman have that boob job conversation with ANY stranger, much less a hot young guy. What was the point of that exchange? Did the writer want to make the character seem aspie? Just ridiculous. All of the dialog was absurd.

As a woman of a certain age myself (and not a frumpy one) who has traveled quite a bit, I can attest 100% that young men the world over, either ignore you completely or treat you with polite tolerance. That is all you can ever expect unless they want something---usually money.

Absolutely agree, r271. Will’s behavior made no sense, either. If he was trying to flatter her, it wasn’t to have sex with her; he wanted to use her apartment to have sexual with the younger woman.

If he knew that Lyle could be bought off for a small sum, why didn’t he just ask Lyle to use one of the other properties he managed? And why didn’t he know that he was putting Leda into a “woman scorned” role? He was quite stupid.

I like Colman but she was all wrong for this film and she's actually not very good.

Buckley was great as the young Leda...she fit the role.

Apparently in the original book, Leda is from Naples (the Newark of Italy) and runs off to Florence to become an academic and when she runs into the awful family at the resort, it's traumatic for her because they're all trash from Naples and they remind her of the life she left behind. Which helps make the story and Leda's actions make sense.

Gyllenahaal fucked up with the setting and the casting. She should have either done it in the US with an American cast or done it in the UK with a British cast. Setting it in Greece with British and American actors just fucked it all up.

Everyone who is saying the younger guy wouldn't have dinner with her is missing the point- he *did* want something from her. He was working her and we see this play out later in the film. He sees that she's intelligent and observant and is going to inevitably twig what's going on between him and Nina. So he's trying to get her on their side, made her an ally or accomplice to their hookup.

But it backfires because all he knows how to do is flirt....so when he wants her to help him with Nina later on, it blows up in his face because she feels rejected.

Right, R274, I saw the same story you did. Initially, when he "asked her out," I did question the storytelling and the casting decisions, but it was soon revealed that 1) he asked her out to warn her about how dangerous the family is, and 2) he then dropped the bomb of asking to fuck the other woman her quarters.

So he was seducing Leda only in the sense that he was flattering her so as to take advantage of her non-sexually—which many people do.

I also think that since the story is so internal and presented in the context of Leda's self-awareness and self-image, some of the initial feeling we get that the young guy wanted to seduce her may be meant to have been Leda's unrealistic egotism misinterpreting the situation as she recalled when the ugly professor hit on her.

[quote]1) he asked her out to warn her about how dangerous the family is, and 2) he then dropped the bomb of asking to fuck the other woman her quarters.

Then why would he risk getting killed by one of those thugs for hooking up with Nina?

[quote]Leda hugely disapproved of Nina having the affair whilst still pretending to adore her husband. Maybe she was jealous but she wanted to upset Nina, and succeeded.

Uh, what? Leda has no room to judge anyone. She had an affair herself when she was younger....left her kids for the guy.

So in the end does she die of sepsis after being stabbed with the hat pin?

R278 No, the hatpin was poisoned with a slow-acting lethal drug. The sequel will show that the family who killed her are an organized crime family similar to the ones in "The Americans."

So I finally watched this today and found it quite dull but looking at the cast I found out that Dagmara Domińczyk played the fat pregnant sister in law and that she is married in Real Life to big dicked Patrick Wilson and that Dagmara's sister is married to Scott Foley who I used to both hot and married to Jennifer Garner.

As for the film itself, I can only imagine it would have been more enjoyable to watch it in an art house cinema amongst other people who wanted to enjoy it more than they did, and who thought it's a better film than it is because it's being shown in an art house cinema. 2 hours with unpleasant people you don't care about.

I cared more about the doll than the people.

Was unsure whether the movie was awful or I’m an idiot. But I read the book and now I’m confident the movie is truly awful.

First off, the character is definitely supposed to be a very attractive, THIN, well-dressed, young-looking woman with hair that is long enough to take a while to dry. This is important because it’s a plot point.

In the book, the Callie character is quite unattractive (in the movie she is fat/pregnant and brash, but certainly not ugly). Leda identifies with Nina as a version of her younger self because Nina is beautiful.

The weird convo with Will is an internal dialogue and it suggests that her daughters resent her (like she claims she resents her mother) because Leda did not pass on all her looks. Also, she is supposed to have gone from having breasts to small-chested, not vice-versa.

Cont. In the (Italian) novel, all of the characters are Italian and it takes place in Sicily. Leda and the family are all from Naples, but Leda is embarrassed by this (she is very image conscious). That’s where that weird, “I thought you were from Queens” comment comes from. She IS from (what I assume) is the Italian version of Queens, same as Callie and Nina. But she doesn’t like that a about herself and tries to, if not conceal, at least not advertise it.

Having a reasonably bright Irish kid working at a public beach in a part of Greece where families and middle l-ages people vacation made no sense, but was far from the biggest problem.

The random hikers? In the book, Leda attributed her decision to desert her daughters in part to the example set by the female hiker. The male hiker left his family to run off with her and they described it as a great decision.

Finally, Leda is unsure why she takes and keeps the doll, but I think it’s suggested that unconsciously 1. She is jealous of Nina because Nina is a good and doting mother with a tight bond with her daughter. Leda resents this, and also how both Nina and her daughter mother the doll and 2. Leda keeps the doll despite the daughter’s distress because she likes seeing Nina get stressed out when her daughter is a PITA over it. She likes to see Nina being a frustrated mother, like she was.

And THAT’S why Nina stabs her when she sees that Leda has the doll. Because Nina was so frustrated that she was on the verge of cheating and was at Leda’s place to set up a place to do it. Then she sees the doll and realizes what Leda has almost driven her to, so she stabs her with a hatpin. She stabs her from behind and the Leda character in the novel is so slim that she can look down and see the point of the hat pin poking out in front. It goes right through her.

I think it’s an emperor has no clothes situation. Gyllenhaal made terrible decisions, so much so that the story doesn’t make sense. And no actress who accepts a role that she is so unsuited for should get awards for acting it. The movie would it have beef good anyway, but the casting made it nonsensical.

Thank you, r282. That certainly helps. The decision to set the movie in Greece with all the various nationalities makes it incomprehensible. Perhaps Callie would mistake Leda as being from a certain socioeconomic class, but not as someone from Queens.

The Americans being on holiday en masse in Greece on holiday didn't bother me.

I didn't get if Olivia Colman/Jessie Buckley were meant to be British and living in the US. The "Cambridge near Boston" bit confused me.

But then I realised I didn't like anyone enough to care.

I think Maggie Gyllenhaal might actually think that Colman is attractive - because they resemble each other! They both have that Droopy Dawg face!

Although Maggie has a lithe body and Colman has a dumpy and matronly one.

R285 What’s confusing about a British academic teaching in the USA?

This thread became tiresome and repetitive about 100 replies ago.

Good bye.

R288 Airport posting? Announcing a departure is NOT necessary.

R287, to someone who knows that Boston and Cambridge are also places in England (though not as close to each other as their Massachusetts namesakes), the fact that Leda is English herself may lead them to think that she's talking about the English places of those names. Obviously, we're meant to deduce that it's the US because of the academic connection.

Yes, but it’s still NOT confusing.

It's how you say "Harvard" without saying it.

Thanks, R283. I finally feel like I understand what happened.

I guess I should have just read the book instead.

Thanks R281/282/283. Now it all makes sense. Gyllenahaal really made a mess of it. Wrong setting, switching up everyone's nationalities/ethnicities, poor casting. What a train wreck.

I don't understand why OC would even take the role. She seems like a highly intelligent woman who would have read the book. I'm sure she is under no illusions that she appears beautiful, thin and much younger than her age.

[quote]It's how you say "Harvard" without saying it.

OH I SEE. Being a non-academic British person that makes sense.

Colman and Buckley's accents came and went. At one point on the beach Colman was asked "where are your people from" and she said Leeds, which I'm guessing is meant to be Leeds in Yorkshire, England, home to Melanie B and lesbian boxer Nicola Adams, but Colman/Buckley's accents didn't sync with that.

And when Buckley was living in the woods with her husband and daughters and the 2 hikers came along, was that in the US? Because when Buckley left she said her mother looked after the kids, so did her mother fly from England?

I find myself thinking more about those aspects than why she stole the doll, whether she died from the stabbing and the phone call on the beach is a dying fantasy and whether she kidnapped the little girl and took her to the forest while the mother was distracted.

Olivia Wilde should have played Leda.

I just wanted to shout at the screen (I went to a screening back in October) “JUST GIVE HER THE FUCKING DOLL!”

Who would have been a good Leda and still been jealous of Dakota's looks? Any suggestions? Keep coming back to JLo but she's not a great actor. Marion Cottilard?

Is Oliva Colman getting the same types of role that Emma Thompson got when she was younger?

A younger Kristen Scott Thomas.

While watching the film, I kept thinking Naomi Watts would've been a great Leda. She has a cerebral quality to her beauty, and her blonde English rose prettiness would've fit Leda's narrative. She's also early 50s so she might've been too old, but she would've killed it. Colman does what she can in the role though.

IIRC the reason they set it in Greece was due to COVID - it was shot in the fall of 2020 and they just could not import a bunch of actors into Italy at the time.

I've seen a couple of articles about how The Lost Daughter is revealing an unspoken truth that mothers don't always like their children and aren't maternal as if it's never been done before.

[quote]‘The Lost Daughter’ Defies Centuries of Motherhood Stereotypes. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut joins two other new movies in foregoing the expected—and instead exploring the sometimes harrowing choices made by mothers.

What are the roles below, chopped liver?

I can think of Julianne Moore in The Hours, Ann Reid in The Mother, Allison Janney in I Tonya, Anjelica Huston in The Grifters, Monique in Precious:: Base On The Novel "Push" by Sapphire Which Was Made Into A Movie By Lee Daniels, Jessie Buckley in Wild Rose etc

^^ Mommie Dearest

Hello! I've been around for thousands years already!

I thought this was very atmospheric and well-acted (also definitely see the parallels to "Death in Venice"), but I admittedly found the incessant flashback intercuts distracting. I frankly felt like Gyllenhaal was beating the audience over the head with "Leda was an academic who couldn't function as a mother!!!" to the point of delirium. I was more interested in what was occurring int he present, particularly the bizarre dynamics between Leda and the trashy family from Queens.

The atmosphere of the film was reminiscent of Last Summer. I expected a more dramatic climax which never happened. The hat pin seemed an odd choice as I wasn’t aware women used hat pins in the 21st century.

R307 They do if they need a hat large enough to be secured with a hat pin.

Instead of a baddish artsy movie, it could have been a terrible artsy streaming series starring Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon! What a waste!

[quote]The hat pin seemed an odd choice as I wasn’t aware women used hat pins in the 21st century.

Them she lived with would have killed for a hat pin, let alone a hat!

Has anyone watched this twice? Any difference?

This role was begging for Charlotte Rampling 20 years ago.

R303, at the screening I attended Maggie Gyllenhaal said at the Q&A that while reading The Lost Daughter she came across a character that she’d never seen before and she said had certainly never existed on film before. I thought to myself “Really, bitch”? How very fucking pretentious-and stupid-of her to actually believe that.

[quote] First off, the character is definitely supposed to be a very attractive, THIN, well-dressed, young-looking woman with hair that is long enough to take a while to dry. This is important because it’s a plot point.

[quote] Who would have been a good Leda and still been jealous of Dakota's looks? Any suggestions? Keep coming back to JLo but she's not a great actor. Marion Cottilard?

There are dozens of attractive, self-contained, self-assured actress who appear an attractive 48 that would be better cast, of multiple nationalities and ethnicities:

Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Chastain, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Vera Farmiga, Kathryn Hahn, Keeley Hawes, Sally Hawkins, Diane Kruger, Sanaa Lathan, Thandie Newton, Chloe Sevigny, Gwyneth Paltrow, Naomi Watts, Rachel Weiss, Kate Winslet.

Out of left field choice: Jennifer Aniston. The wrong side of 40 and you can tell it hurts, both warm and cold, worldly with an underlying scrappiness, has sexuality but a lost quality, ancestral east coast trash.

Speaking of Aniston (Image could kind of work) I was thinking about Angelina Jolie and Reese Witherspoon, who both ought to have the chops for this role but there’s not way that Camp Event and Type A MILF would allow themselves to play disinterested mothers.

[quote] IIRC the reason they set it in Greece was due to COVID - it was shot in the fall of 2020 and they just could not import a bunch of actors into Italy at the time.

Gyllenhaal got NJ tax breaks and was ready to start production on the Jersey Shore which would have worked, actually, if Colman had done an accent.

In a COVID free world and if she wanted Colman and no one else, then Gyllenhaal could have set it in the UK and filmed in Cornwall, perhaps the Isles of Scilly.

And Nina’s family could be a bunch of Essex louts and East End heavies. Ray Winstone as Callisto’s husband, Danny Dyer as Toni.

COVID could have provided the explanation for why an American family was on such a long vacation. Gyllenhaal could have set it in any number of US locations. The family from queens could have rented a McMansion on a beach in NC/SC and Leda (the academic formerly from queens) could have been loaned the next-door future teardown that has been in a colleague’s family for decades.

The location of Greece worked for me. It's the sort of off beat tranquil beauty spot someone like Olivia Colman's character would go for the first time to get some solitude, and it's somewhere where the American family would return each year because of their historical associations with the area and carrying on the tradition.

I

R316 Maybe I am overthinking this, but somehow a respected academic going on an extended vacation to read and do work... to the Jersey Shore.... just doesn't make my bed.

The location of the film was the least of this films problems.

I seriously doubt this was going to be shot on the Jersey Shore. Were Snooki and The Situation going to make cameo appearances?

Cape May could have worked- lovely old Victorians, loutish Irish/Italians from wildwood spilling over.

I prefer Wildwood actually.

NJ/NY trash don't spend tens of thousands of dollars to send their entire extended family on annual trips to Greece or Italy. It just doesn't happen. Gyllenhaal is a dilettante who has zero knowledge or experience with this demo. They buy big family compounds at the Jersey shore (yes, R322 gets it---Wildwood for sure) and congregate there.

Leda feeling somewhat threatened and uncomfortable by Nina's husband and family was the guilt she was feeling over stealing their child's doll, possibly thinking they knew she stole it and could see through her. In reality, I believe they were just lowkey friendly, quasi-disinterested, but we saw a slightly threatening demeanor through Leda's eyes and guilty psyche that in reality, was nothing more than simple glances and greetings.

R323 Oh, really?

R323 is right. As much as Miss Margalit Gyllenhaal likes to think of herself as a worldly and conscious artiste, she is seriously out of her depth in that regard. She was writing away at the screenplay in her hip multi-million dollar Brooklyn brownstone, thinking, "Yeah–let's make them from New York! I hear there are a lot of ethnics in Queens!" It seems stupid and totally arbitrary, as well as an excuse for her to have some New York connection which really just doesn't make sense. Leda living in "Cambridge, near Boston" also seemed random, though it obviously was intended to imply that she was tenured at Harvard.

[quote] I seriously doubt this was going to be shot on the Jersey Shore. Were Snooki and The Situation going to make cameo appearances?

From the Gyllenhaal’s Own Mouth.

It would be filmed at a stretch with nice beach houses. Not at Vic And Anthony’s Steakhouse And Nightclub.

R321 Actually, Snooki would have been a good Callie, and the Situation could have easily been one of the asshole thugs in the family.

Maggie doesn’t really get outer Borough culture.

I thought her main objection was that they were boisterous. I didn’t think she was concerned with them being lower class at first. Callie was the one who did that when she said “fancy”.

If they wanted them to holiday from New Jersey they should have picked the Bahamas. If they wanted a crime family vacationing in Greece, say they're from London's east end.

[quote] Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Chastain, Marion Cotillard, Penelope Cruz, Vera Farmiga, Kathryn Hahn, Keeley Hawes, Sally Hawkins, Diane Kruger, Sanaa Lathan, Thandie Newton, Chloe Sevigny, Gwyneth Paltrow, Naomi Watts, Rachel Weiss, Kate Winslet.

I can't imagine Beckinsale in this role at all because of her lofe offscreen. She seems really wrapped up in superficial concerns and I couldn't possibly suspend disbelief to imagine her as a scholar.

Vera Farmiga and Thandie Newton, though, are inspired choices. They're both brilliant and terribly underused. Newton is both a revelation as a mystical robot witch and kind of wasted in that role in West World—wasted in the sense that she has proved she can and should play smart, reality-based roles she doesn't get.

And Farmiga is captivating to me and all I see her cast in now are dumb haunted house movies. She deserves 'literary' projects. Bates Motel was not the greatest show ever made, but Norma Bates was a great characterization mostly due to Farmiga's brilliance.

Chloe Sevigny seems a bit obvious because she would have nailed this role. Oh my God, I HATED her Nicky on Big Love and I also could not keep my eyes off of her. She is made for the role of an abrasive professor on vacation who fucks with strangers, is a negligent mother and gets herself in trouble.

[quote]It's the sort of off beat tranquil beauty spot someone like Olivia Colman's character would go for the first time to get some solitude, and it's somewhere where the American family would return each year because of their historical associations with the area and carrying on the tradition.

I agree R318. For instance, Ed Harris' character "worked" for me: a working-class American expat on his, etc.

However, I think the primary "Greek-American" characters should have thrown out a few Greek works to make it work and feel more authentic. That includes Dakota Johnson, Oliver Cohen, etc. It was just weird.

I spent a great deal of time trying to figure out where this movie was supposed to be set (Colman's British accent, Dakota's American accent, tropical locations), which unnecessarily distracted me from the film.

I bet Maggie G is a Lars Von Trier fan. The artsy ambiguity, the peculiar casting and the multinational backgrounds and mixed accents among characters that the audience is just supposed to accept without questioning are hallmarks of his writing and direction. So is dark psychological subject matter. I love love love Melancholia, which I think most people hate hate hate, and I could see The Lost Daughter as a project of a film student who loves Von Trier.

I didn't find the setting to be all that beautiful or pleasant. The rocky, desert-dry beach, mucky brown water, buggy room, obnoxious people...ick. And why not just leave when things got nasty with the trashy family? There were an infinite number of places she could have gone that would have been more beautiful, quiet and peaceful.

R335 exactly. The scenery was hardly of the to die for talented mr Ripley variety.

Why such focus on the setting not being pretty? The whole movie is about rough, messy, unpleasant people and messy, unpleasant lives.

[quote]I can't imagine Beckinsale in this role at all because of her lofe offscreen. She seems really wrapped up in superficial concerns and I couldn't possibly suspend disbelief to imagine her as a scholar.

She studied Slavic languages at Oxford and is very funny in interviews but had a lot of cosmetic surgery and never gets to work with great directors.

That’s Kate in a nutshell.

She shouldn’t have become an actress. She wasted her Oxford education.

Beckinsale may be brilliant but she made herself into a Barbie and would be hard to see as a professor. She could ugly herself up but with all the cosmetic work she couldn't look plain.

I loved her when I saw her first in Much Ado About Nothing, but she went the vampire action movie route and I don't consider her a serious actor for an art film.

Beckinsale’s performance in The Last Days of Disco legitimizes her decision to become an actress.

Beckinsale can act and has appeared looking non-Malibu Barbie playing journalists etc.

Uma Thurman for Leda.

[quote] I prefer Wildwood actually.

R322 = DJT supporter.

This movie was a lot funnier than expected! I did a spit-take when Will (Paul Mescal) referred to Leda as "beautiful."

Thandie Newton still looks pretty and young and I don't think she's identify with a white woman (Dakota)

[quote] She shouldn’t have become an actress. She wasted her Oxford education.

Kate’s parents were both actors so I guess she was bitten by the big early.

I could see her rather cutting TV reporter.

Is it worth pointing out that Kate Beckinsale is part Asian and therefore casting her as Leda would increase the film's ethnic diversity?

Kate Beckinsale's first tv appearance at 5.45.

[quote] Maybe I am overthinking this, but somehow a respected academic going on an extended vacation to read and do work... to the Jersey Shore.... just doesn't make my bed.

Not everyone can afford Cape Cod or Maine.

I'm sorry, but I am not on the Jesse Buckley bandwagon AT ALL. At this point I've seen her in I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Romeo and Juliet, and The Lost Daughter. She's the least interesting person in all 3.

R351, try her in Wild Rose.

If not for her, then for that incredible song (written by Mary Steenburgen, who started songwriting at age 54 following undergoing a general anaesthetic).

Or just listen to the song, if you haven't already. God, it's gorgeous. So is Buckley's voice.

Ok, that was good, R352! I'll have to check out the movie.

As a gay actressexual, I LOVE complicated movies about complicated, difficult women. But this was just a baffling snoozer. Plot twists that made no sense, no real insight into the motivations of the main character, poorly directed and edited scenes, a script that definitely needed shaping and pruning. There's a reason it's at 45% on RottenTomatoes and it's not just that people have shitty taste...

[quote] no real insight into the motivations of the main character

A lot of critics nowadays acknowledge this about a movie but assign it a badge of honor as if it makes it more "deep". Movies like this used to make me feel dumb for not seeing how wonderful they are but now I just get pissed at the critic for recommending them.

[quote] As a gay actressexual,

Is this a typo or is this a new phrase?

It is a niche label which has been around since the 2000s, R356.

Nathaniel Rogers started it on his website TheFilmExperience.

Is she dead at the end of the movie?

Yes.

Like r60, it wasn’t until this movie that I understood that Jessie Buckley and Jessie Mueller were different people.

Buckley is prettier and a better singer. YMMV.

[quote] Did anyone recognize Dagmara from that Jennifer Anniston/ Walburger movie , Rockstar

What are you, nuts?! No!

What I didn't understand is where that kid got the Trixie Mattel doll.

Lastly, I think it's amusing that some of the people on this thread can't believe that you run into tourists from many different countries when you vacation abroad.

^You don't run into entire extended trashy families from New Jersey though.

I read the screenplay and Leda is definitely supposed to be sexually self-possessed and not galumphing about men like an awkward teenager.

Colman doesn’t have it in her.

Olivia Colman has practically negative sex appeal. She’s a great actress but that is not part of her wheelhouse of tricks.

It’s not even a lack of sex appeal, she doesn’t emit any sexual energy that isn’t that of a nervous, goofy, virgin.

It's between Coleman & Kidman for Oscar.

I think Chastain is very much in the conversation.

Well, I’m gonna have to root for Colman because Kidman’s Lucy cosplay was terrible.

Colman? An Oscar? For this?

I think the character is way too unlikable to be rewarded with the top lead honor this year. At no point was I rooting for this character in any way.

Nicole Kidman is no charmer as Lucille Ball, but there are at least moments of spark where I can see her presence shining.

I sort of just wanted Leda to die at the end (which maybe she did?)

I don't think Kidman has a chance. Colman may have a chance, but overall the film was weak, so that won't help her. I think it's going to be between Jessica Chastain and Penelope Cruz.

No, no, no! It's Penelope Cruz this year.

JUST GIVE HER THE FUCKING DOLL!

Foreign language performances still have a huge hurdle with the Academy. There’s a reason that there’s only been two Best Actress Oscar winner giving non-English language performances.

R374 That's the part of the move that bugged me the most. And when she finally did hand it over, why didn't she just fucking lie and say, "Hey, look! I just found the doll!" No, instead, she decided to show some honesty at the most inopportune moment.

R374, right? Fucking weirdo. Who steals a child’s doll?

I asked this earlier in the thread - when the girl went missing from the beach did Olivia Colman lead her away and leave her in the forest, at the same time as stealing the fucking doll? Or was it just a coincidence?

Doesn’t the Jessie Buckley iteration of her character lose her own daughter (in the water if all places) later in the film?

R378 I didn't get the sense that Olivia led the girl astray.

Olivia Wilde would have been great in the role.

Maggie has plenty of experience with dysfunctional mothers, having come from one and currently being one. She and her husband are horrible, unfeeling people.

R379, she loses track of her (was it a beach?). Eventually she finds her, of course, but I think it’s about the sheer panic a parent feels when a kid disappears like that.

I was lying there, lying on the beach, when I had a dream that I was swept away!

I just saw it last night, and I’m glad this thread is here to help clarify some things and bring up some points that I had not even considered

Mouth breathing , no talent Bronx accented JLo being cast as a professor? 😭😂🤣

VERY late to this party--mostly out of dread (very well merited, as it turns out).

I thought women hated the C-word but Maggie throws it around with abandon. Perhaps it's only OK if you're a "female creative."

Don't Harvard Comp Lit star profs have friends they go on vacation with? Or are they all this bovine, glum, and sociopathic?

Maggie's (c)hubby seems to be getting ready to play 1970s Orson Welles in a future Netflix project.

R387 Maggie says cunt a lot because it sounds outré and too-cool-for-school when her posh British friends like Emma Thompson so it. Put the same word in Snooki’s mouth and the filters of wit and naughtiness vanish.

It made perfect sense to me that this damaged and fragile woman would vacay alone on a working holiday. I think most of the problems DLers find with the character lie with Olivia Colman’s casting.

On the plus side Colman can be crisply imperious, mischievous and bitter when need be and hit those notes. BUT. While she’s nice enough looking and not fat, she’s anonymous looking she has zero sensuality. Colman gives off a panic-ridden middle-aged virgin affect when playing sexuality. She was painful flirting with grizzled Ed Harris (who was still miles out of her league) and never for a moment would we assume Paul Mescal had any interest in her. Her subsequent humiliation was dulled by the obviousness.

I could have better seen it 10 years ago with Juliette Binoche, 20 years ago with Isabelle Huppert or 30 years ago when it’s Charlotte Rampling.

Or a contemporary actress who can play eroticism like Kate Winslet.

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