Accolades AwardĬharles Dorfman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Osnat Handelsman-Keren and Talia Kleinhendler Metacritic, another aggregator, sampled 46 critics and calculated a weighted average score of 86 out of 100, indicating "universal acclaim". The website's critical consensus reads, "A strikingly assured debut for writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter unites a brilliant cast in service of a daringly ambitious story." The audience score on the same website was 46% as of January 2022. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 95% of 192 reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.90/10.
Reception Īt its opening night world premiere, the movie received a four-minute standing ovation from Venice Film Festival attendees in the Sala Grande. It was released in the United States on December 17, 2021, in a limited release prior to streaming on Netflix on December 31, 2021. The film screened at film festivals in the Telluride, Hamptons, London, Lyon Metropolis, Mill Valley, Montclair, New York, San Diego (closing night) Zurich. In August 2021, Netflix acquired distribution rights to the film in the United States and several other countries, adding more markets, including the United Kingdom, in October. The Lost Daughter had its world premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on September 3, 2021. Principal photography began in Spetses, Greece, in September 2020. In August, Paul Mescal was added, and in October 2020, Oliver Jackson-Cohen was cast as well, with Ed Harris, Dagmara Domińczyk, Jack Farthing and Alba Rohrwacher joining in November. In February 2020, Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson and Peter Sarsgaard were cast in the film. Maggie Gyllenhaal acquired the film rights to the Elena Ferrante novel in October 2018, and wrote and directed the adaptation.
Leda says she is fine and then looks down to discover an orange in her hands she peels the orange skin off "like a snake", the way she had done for her daughters when they were little. They express their relief to hear from their mother, from whom they had not heard in a few days. The next morning, Leda awakes on the beach and calls Bianca, who happens to be with Martha. She stumbles down the beach and collapses on the shoreline. That night, Leda packs her bags and leaves the resort, but drives her car off the road due to the pain from her wound. Nina reacts angrily and stabs Leda in the stomach with the hatpin before leaving. Leda also gives her Elena's doll, confessing that she took it and that she was "just playing". The next day when Nina arrives at Leda's to get the apartment keys, Leda admits to being a selfish and "unnatural" mother and warns Nina that her depression will never go. Nina learns that Leda knows about her and Will, and Will later asks Leda if they can borrow her apartment to have sex. She admits that being away from her daughters felt "amazing", and she only went back to them when she genuinely missed them. When Nina asks Leda about her daughters, Leda becomes emotional she reveals that she had abandoned them for three years after she became too overwhelmed, leaving them with her now ex-husband, during which time she had an affair with a fellow professor ( Peter Sarsgaard). The search for Elena's doll continues, with Nina even putting up flyers offering a reward for its return.Īt a market, Leda buys Nina a hatpin to help hold her sunhat in place. Leda later discovers Nina is having an affair with Will ( Paul Mescal), an assistant at the resort, and Nina explains her husband Toni ( Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is very controlling. One evening, Leda has dinner with Lyle ( Ed Harris), her hotel's caretaker, who sees that she has the doll but doesn't comment on it, nor does he tell Nina. In flashbacks, it is revealed that young Leda ( Jessie Buckley) also struggled with being a young mother to her two daughters, Bianca and Martha, often losing her patience and becoming withdrawn from her family. Elena is upset after she loses her favourite doll, which Leda has secretly taken. Leda finds Elena and returns her to Nina, who expresses her growing exhaustion and unhappiness. While on holiday in Greece, middle-aged college professor and noted translator, Leda Caruso ( Olivia Colman), meets Nina ( Dakota Johnson), a young mother, after Nina's three-year-old daughter Elena goes momentarily missing on the beach.