'The Lost Daughter' captures the complicated feelings that come with motherhood

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REVIEW: The film 'makes visceral the fears and shame of mothers who feel themselves unfit, and the guilt that comes with wanting a little piece of your life that’s all your own,' writes film critic seanmburns.

Mothers aren’t supposed to have lives of their own. The cult of sacrifice in this country dictates that everything should be for the sake of the children. As it does with most things, the internet seems to be making this worse.

Gyllenhaal shoots it like a thriller, working with the great cinematographer Hélène Louvart to make this Greek island resort as unsettling as possible. The camera is always either at a slightly obstructed distance or a little too close for comfort. Pauses in conversation linger longer than they should. Leda’s pretty bad at reading social cues to begin with, but some of the behavior she encounters on this beach is admittedly inscrutable.

After this initial unpleasantness, Leda strikes up a friendship with an overwhelmed young mother in the group, played with a haunted air of tragedy by Dakota Johnson. She’s distracted for reasons that will later become clear, and one afternoon loses track of her kid on the beach. Leda winds up finding the toddler, but in another inexplicable act of petty rebellion, she steals the little brat’s beloved baby doll and stashes it in her room.

Gyllenhaal is almost too good at conjuring such a thick atmosphere of intrigue, as it portends a plotty payoff that the film isn’t particularly interested in delivering. There are warnings and whispers about organized crime, but the mysteries of “The Lost Daughter” are entirely psychological, asking us to question not just Leda’s assumptions but also our own.

 

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