The Lost Daughter (2021, Maggie Gyllenhaal) (Patreon)

55/100

Bailed the first time (about six weeks ago), specifically because the flashbacks, which start out brief and jagged and impressionistic, had begun to solidify into proper scenes. Sure enough, I vastly prefer the movie's present-tense complexity to its past-tense explication. Colman conveys Leda's inner turmoil so forcefully that Buckley's presence isn't really necessary, except perhaps in the aforementioned shards (i.e., establishing that Leda did love her girls, which is crucial and might not come across otherwise). Think e.g. of Mitchell Stephens' spider-bite story in The Sweet Hereafter, and how much less powerful it would be if we saw the incident conventionally dramatized after he tells it. (In the actual film, younger Stephens and his wife are played by nobodies and have no lines.) That's pretty much exactly what happens here: Colman absolutely kills her short, harrowing "confession" (wrong word, arguably, but I'm trying to be vague) to Nina, and then we're redundantly shown just how wrenching her departure was—accompanied, for extra pathos, by Roberta Flack's "I Told Jesus." What's more, Colman and Buckley not only look nothing alike but rarely seem to be playing the same woman, except insofar as the latter replicates the former's accent. This was reportedly by design, with Gyllenhaal encouraging them to develop separate conceptions of Leda, on the grounds that people change significantly over time. Not my own experience, I must say; in any case, it didn't play for me here, as Colman, even at her darkest (and this character gets gratifyingly unlikeable), maintains a half-strategic, half-innate politesse that Buckley's Leda entirely lacks. If anything, people tend to discard that quality as they get older, not adopt it. 

Ultimately, it's the sheer irreducibility of 48-year-old Leda's behavior that I find riveting. Not just stealing the doll—to cite the most striking instance—but leaving it out on the balcony when Lyle unexpectedly drops by, despite being handed multiple opportunities to hide it. (His non-response likewise needs no context, and thankfully gets none.) The Lost Daughter's present tense* grows considerably richer and thornier than I'd have guessed from its initial 40 minutes, making it easier to understand why others are so enthused (even if I still find Gyllenhaal's formal approach pedestrian, sorry Noel; watching it immediately after revisiting Knife in the Water certainly didn't help any). I can readily imagine an ~85-minute Colman-only cut that I might love. The more we see of Leda's younger self, though, the less singularly mysterious she seems. As someone who's chosen not to be a parent, precisely for fear that I'd be an "unnatural father"—too selfish, too impatient—I'm theoretically very receptive to the tale of someone actively struggling with that role (cf. Joshua, which admittedly takes the idea in a very different, more fanciful direction). But that turbulent emotional landscape merits an entire movie of its own. 

* Which I guess is roughly now? There are remarkably few temporal signifiers, and I was brought up a bit short when younger Leda snaps "It's not 1985" (in response to welcoming the hikers) and I realized that the flashbacks are theoretically happening in like 2003. Somehow it all seems shifted a good 15-20 years earlier. Maybe that's deliberate, à la The Myth of the American Sleepover.