SummaryAlone on a seaside vacation, Leda (Olivia Colman) becomes consumed with a young mother and daughter as she watches them on the beach. Unnerved by their compelling relationship, (and their raucous and menacing extended family), Leda is overwhelmed by her own memories of the terror, confusion and intensity of early motherhood. An impulsive act shoc... Read More
Directed By:Maggie Gyllenhaal
Written By:Maggie Gyllenhaal, Elena Ferrante
The Lost Daughter
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
86
User score
Generally Favorable
6.3
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Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
94% Positive
48 Reviews
48 Reviews
6% Mixed
3 Reviews
3 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Jan 6, 2022
100
The movie captures the spirit of the novel well. It’s suspenseful, but it’s not a thriller; there are elements of obsession and eroticism, but they never quite go where you expect. The end is deeply ambiguous, neither punishing nor condoning its characters’ behavior. It simply asks us to sit with them — to pay them the respect of attention, and learn something about ourselves in the process.
Sep 13, 2021
100
The Lost Daughter leaves you haunted, shaken, and crushingly scarred like only the best of films are capable of doing.
User score
Generally Favorable
59% Positive
101 Ratings
101 Ratings
18% Mixed
31 Ratings
31 Ratings
23% Negative
40 Ratings
40 Ratings
Apr 30, 2025
10
The Lost Daughter là phim tâm lý về người mẹ giằng xé giữa trách nhiệm và khát khao tự do.
Jan 7, 2022
10
I’m genuinely shocked at how many people didn’t like this movie. Stunning, raw, honest, beautiful, **** up. A must watch.
Sep 13, 2021
90
With The Lost Daughter, Gyllenhaal easily proves her talent and instinct as a director by unflinchingly infusing a great story with her own ideas and images‚ and assembling an unbeatable cast and crew (including Happy as Lazzaro and Never Rarely Sometimes Always cinematographer Hélène Louvart) to bring it home.
Dec 15, 2021
88
Gyllenhaal’s extraordinary direction, paired with exceptional performances from The Lost Daughter’s lead actresses, culminate in a perfect storm that yields an astute portrait of the painful expectations of womanhood.
Jan 3, 2022
80
It’s a movie that, in adapting a novel by Ferrante, indicates the grievous lack in the current cinema of dramas that do what is done all the time in literary fiction: consider women’s lives in intimate detail and in the light of wide-ranging, deep-rooted experience.
Sep 13, 2021
80
I’m not convinced, on balance, that Gyllenhaal’s delicious drama is finally much more than a storm in a teacup. But what a cup, what a storm. When Hurricane Colman blows in from the sea, be sure your roof’s in good shape and that all the windows are fastened.
Dec 6, 2021
50
For a while, Olivia Colman’s expressive performance carries the film, with little narrative distraction or stylistic conspicuousness.
Jan 6, 2022
10
Olivia Colman is everything. Love all the references and how Maggie adapted the book, which is difficult.
Jan 2, 2022
6
The always reliably brilliant Olivia Colman stars as a middle-aged mother on vacation in Greece who is troubled by haunting memories of her past incidents of motherhood with her own two daughters after meeting another young mother (Dakota Johnson) at the beach. Marking the writing/directorial debut for Maggie Gyllenhaal, this is a slow-burn film, albeit a not particularly exciting or compelling one unfortunately. Fine performances are given from all involved, not least by Colman, who never disappoints. Supporting players such as Johnson, Jessie Buckley, and Ed Harris also give worthwhile turns here, but they can't quite compensate for a general lack of spark or guidance in plot or direction. The film does something that's more often than not been a pet peeve of mine, which is it jumps back and forth between past and present through many flashback scenes. The film also simply kind of ends without really resolving or telling us much of anything other than being a parent is hard I guess. Overall, brilliant performances but a rather straightforward and wandering storyline
Jan 25, 2023
4
(Mauro Lanari)
Continuous close-ups of stressed and dissatisfied women ("depression?") while they compare their crises, an alternating montage of past and present of the most cultured of them, a university lecturer in Cambridge who, although infatuated with the existentialist absurd, becomes wife and mother to then mistreat and abandon for three years her two little daughters, guilty of havin' hindered her in career realization and extramarital affair. Emotional and psychological secrets exaggerated by the literary and intellectual matrix, found interesting by a Maggie Gyllenhaal in her feature debut for reasons that don't interest me.
Oct 20, 2022
3
A terrible mom feels bad for abandoning her kids so she psychologically manipulates a family of white-trash gangsters while on holiday. That’s it. That’s the movie. Saved you two hours.
Jan 29, 2022
3
the acting is good, but the film can be uninteresting, insignificant, ignoble, unnecessary, futile and tasteless sometimes
Production Company:
- Fifth Season
- Samuel Marshall Films
- Pie Films
- Faliro House Productions
Release Date:Dec 17, 2021
Duration:2 h 1 m
Rating:R
Awards
Academy Awards, USA
• 3 Nominations
Golden Globes, USA
• 2 Nominations
Alliance of Women Film Journalists
• 1 Win & 9 Nominations
