Raising children isn’t an easy task. With the amount of attention and dedication that is needed to break off fights between siblings and make sure that your kid doesn’t go missing, it can sometimes overwhelm young mothers. Although we’ve seen similar examples on screen (such asCharlize TheroninTully),Maggie Gyllenhaal’s adaptation ofElena Ferrante’s novelThe Lost Daughtercaptures full well the hardships of motherhood. Both through the protagonist’s trajectory and the woman that she observes attentively during her stay on a Greek island.
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Leda (Olivia Coleman) is a college professor, who decides to take some time off in Greece. Committed to relaxing and enjoying the tranquil getaway, little does she know that a family’s arrival would cause such an internal commotion. At first, audiences catch a glimpse of how cold and lonely Leda is, but don’t necessarily understand what led her to be this way. When Nina (Dakota Johnson) and her daughter, Elena, come into the picture, things start to gain more clarity as we see Leda’s undeniable interest in Nina. Her face seems to always sympathize with the exhausted mother, and that is because Leda has experienced that same scenario in her personal life.
In flashbacks, we see that Leda (younger version played byJesse Buckley) is a mother of two girls (Bianca and Martha), and she struggles to maintain her patience and is far from exuding motherly care. It is evident that Bianca hits her nervesmuchmore than Martha, leading Leda to constantly reprimand Bianca. Most often than not, her attempts to tame her daughter’s behavior are unsuccessful, which only intensifies Leda’s urge to break free from the burden of motherhood and worsens Bianca’s behavior. Bianca’s stubbornness shows on multiple occasions when she scribbles all over Leda’s childhood doll, slaps her mother back when she is spanked and is always repeating whatever Leda says in Italian when her mother is trying to focus on a project. A massive disconnect opens between Led and Bianca, resulting in Leda’s coldness to her, especially when Bianca hurts her finger and asks her mother to kiss it repeatedly whilst Leda ignores her sobbing pleas. Ignoring one’s child’s cries for comfort and preferring one child over another are only two of the characteristics that make Leda an unfit mother in the eyes of society.
She is not only deemed an unsuitable mother, but a not so “understanding wife”. We witness her impatience with her husband, Joe (Jack Farthing), once he tries to deal with issues at work and leaves the children in her full responsibility. Although the couple is equally involved in academia, Leda’s career is usually pushed aside so that Joe can thrive and that frustrates her. They also struggle to find a common ground when Joe can’t satisfy Leda’s sexual desires, which becomes an additional barrier to their relationship. These two factors play a large role in Leda’s decision to prioritize her career when she chooses to leave her daughters under Joe’s care and begins an affair with a professor. Instead of conforming to the maternal ideal and thinking about the family first over professional and extra-marital endeavors, Leda once again evades the stereotype and leaves her family behind for three years.
Leda’s hardship with motherhood and marriage in the past clearly impacts her current situation. Divorced and distant from her daughters (only uttering a couple of words to Martha on the phone), Leda seems to have adapted to solitude but is haunted by her decision-making during her early adult life. When she observes Nina and Elena on the beach, she sees her own reflection staring back at her. Nina is just as non-idealistic as Leda in terms of motherhood. She is never fully paying attention to Elena and even loses her daughter in one of their visits to the beach. Nina also can’t keep her daughter under control when Elena’s doll disappears and even reverts to an affair to alleviate the anguish.
It is clear that Leda wishes that she could go back in time and repair some of her actions. This is evident when Leda steals Elena’s doll, which is similar to the one she used to own in her childhood and later gave to Bianca. Since Bianca destroyed the doll and Leda ended up shoving it down the window accidentally, nowadays, she wishes to take care of the doll and refuses to give it back. Once she sees the worm coming out of the doll’s mouth, Leda reconciles with the fact that nothing is going to change. When she gives it back to Nina along with keys to her apartment, she makes it clear that the troubles of motherhood will never go away.
The end of the film is left ambiguous. Leda faints on a beach and when she wakes up, she has a warm and happy conversation with both her daughters on the phone. They express their worry about her and ask her to peel an orange (which magically appears beside her) “like a snake” which she used to do for them when they were children. It could be argued that this is actually Leda in the afterlife, and it is only after she has died that she has amended her relationship with her daughters as throughout the film she doesn’t speak to Bianca at all and has a short, disconnected phone call with Martha.
All this is to say that throughout the film, we see Leda and Nina as two examples of mothers who don’t have a pleasant experience with motherhood. They aren’t “naturals” in handling their children and the mere thought of going away for a while seems like heaven to them, while many of the mothers we generally see on-screen would not even think twice about renouncing their role.The Lost Daughterdraws emphasis to the fact that not all mothers find the experience joyous. They aren’t the embodiment of maternal idealization, but instead, they are simply human. They have flaws and their decision to experience an alternate reality instead of reliving the day-to-day routine at home with their children running around is the perfect example of them shedding away from social standards.
However, the film also alludes to the fact that mothers who decide to not prioritize their relationship with their family, will experience the burden that comes with that. The cost of a temporary escape can mean a broken relationship that may or may never be mended in the future.
