The Lost Daughter Explores The Crushing Weight of Womanhood

What do women owe the world?

It’s a complex question with no conclusive answer, but one that is explored deeply in this quiet masterpiece.

Netflix has categorized The Lost Daughter as understated, cerebral, and intimate. If those sub-genres are what you’re looking for, this film should hit the spot. If you’re hoping for something that follows the bread crumbs left by most popular feature films, you’re likely to walk away disappointed.

In The Lost Daughter, we follow the journey of a single, middle-aged woman on holiday- the story isn’t anti-climactic, but it does not follow a typical story structure.

We find plenty of antagonism in the difficult people our main character encounters, but there are two notable antagonists that leading lady Olivia Colman faces; herself, and society.

Colman plays Leda, a 48-year-old professor who has traveled to a small island in Greece for a working holiday.

On her first full day, Leda sets herself up to work on a deserted beach. She is approached by a young male employee who asks if she’d like to move her chair.

“Oh yeah, I am in the sun,” Leda says simply. She’s not disgruntled and no one is mad, but it’s still a strange moment. She chose this spot and could easily have chosen a different spot. It feels reminiscent of a moment in a previous scene where the manager of Leda’s rental unit insists on turning on the air even though Leda specifies that she prefers the fresh ocean air. We are setting up a world where no one ever just listens to and respects this educated, grown-up woman.

For Leda, small struggles are the norm and she is often clumsy in her resolution of these things. It’s easy to chalk these experiences up as minor inconveniences, and we should also understand the reality that many issues we see her in about be avoided with better life skills and adaptability.

On the other hand, why is it her responsibility to bend every time something comes up?

This is not just a major thematic element in the film, but also in the world; this is something that is constantly asked of women. Adjust to circumstances, ignore that which bothers us, and bend to other’s needs and wants, all with a smile.

Among the beach regulars is Nina, played by Dakota Johnson. Her presence prompts Leda’s many flashbacks to her time as a young mother. One memory we visit many times involves Leda removing an orange peel in one piece, like a snake.

Early in the film, Nina’s daughter, Elena, goes missing for a few minutes and is found by Leda. But when she is returned, the family (and the little girl) realize her beloved doll is missing. We quickly find out that Leda has taken the doll, and by then we’ve seen a flashback of her losing her temper and destroying the doll she’d given her young daughters.

She’s not malicious in taking the doll, but it’s also a questionable choice.

Leda eventually decides to return the doll, but on her way, she spots Nina making out with Will (the young beach-worker) and changes her mind. Around this time, Leda has dinner with her landlord, Lyle who spots the doll on her balcony, even picking it up.

He knows the goings-on in the town and has to have heard that the doll was missing, but he does not mention it. All over the island, there are “missing” posters for the doll so it’s pretty big news.

Meanwhile, we get to learn a bit more about Leda’s past and her own affair.

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity” is one of the quotes we hear from her colleague/lover Peter Saarsgaard, which is an interesting and relevant statement. But unlike many people who engage in affairs, the attention isn’t what drives Leda; it doesn’t seem to be what she’s after at all.

We also know that Leda is a professor, but her earlier work experiences show her as a writer — was writing her true passion? Did she ultimately become a professor because that was a more viable option as a full-time parent?

Back in real time, Leda keeps working on the doll, restoring it. While pumping water and dirt out of the dolls mouth, a live worm comes crawling out.

This is graphic and disgusting, but also potentially a symbol of something rotting. There are a lot of things rotting in this story; Leda’s relationships, her choices, and her wavering commitment to motherhood.

Leda is not a lovable character- we “root” for her in a way, but she’s not aspirational.

While I dislike her choices, it’s also reasonable to look at how this situation might pan out if it were reversed; what if a man left his family for several months for his career.

We learn that Leda abandoned her girls for three years, but well before that, she spent time pursuing her career, which called for shorter periods of time away. When she did this, her husband failed to take on her responsibilities as the work in the household was clearly heavily out of balance from the start.

We see Leda leave for her first trip and how she preps an overnight sitter in spite of having the girl’s father at home. In a reversed situation, it would be shocking to see an overnight sitter staying with a mother while a dad was away for a few days on business.

There is a long thread of inequality woven into every aspect of Leda’s life and perhaps that is a significant part of why parenthood never agrees with her.

On one hand, we can go along with what Leda herself says, that she was not a natural parent- on the other hand, she didn’t have one child and realize it wasn’t for her. She had two children, a few years apart. It suggests that at one point, she may have thought she wanted that life.

From the start, Leda seems to see a lot of herself in Nina.

“Is this gonna pass?” Nina asks Leda, wanting to know if she is going through some temporary malaise or if this is just her life now.

At this point, Leda has no encouragement as her own feelings are beyond complicated. She left for three years and returned, but it stands to reason that she mostly returned because she had a responsibility.

Did she even want to? It’s no accident that we do not see that happy reunion. This isn’t a film about reconciliation, it’s a film about expectations and perceived responsibility.

Leda is about to (reluctantly) give Nina a key to her rental apartment so she’ll have a place to have her extramarital affair, and she leaves the room to get her something else — the doll she’d taken days earlier.

Nina is angry and shocked- Leda has no words to articulate her choice other than to give the dissatisfying answer that she was “just playing.” Nina impulsively stabs Leda in the abdomen with a long hair pin and tells her to to watch her back.

After some prep of watching Leda pack up her belongs, we return to the ominous first scene of the film where we saw Leda walking down to the beach and collapsing at the edge of the water.

Did she pass out from the stab wound? Possibly. Although, it also seems more likely that the vertigo she suffered throughout the whole film might have been the culprit.

Leda wakes up the next morning in the same place she passed out. We see her answer her phone; it’s her daughters.

“I left so many messages — I though you were dead,” her daughter says.

“I’m alive, actually,” Leda says.

It’s interesting that her daughters were able to leave multiple messages without hearing back — how long had she been ignoring them? Days? This is very telling about their relationship as the more typical expectation is that most children, even adult children, are able to reach their mothers almost immediately at all times.

At the end of the film we see Leda with an orange, which she peels with her fingers.

This is absolutely the happiest and most content she has seemed in the whole film- talking to her daughters on the phone and peeling an orange.

Some reviews speculate she died and “where did that orange come from,” but note, she also did not seem to have her phone when she walked from the car either. It looks like, perhaps, she woke up, returned to the car and maybe got the orange? It’s hard to say.

It’s a little open-ended, but doesn’t exactly feel like a plot hole.

There isn’t enough evidence to fairly suggest that she died, though who really knows.

I haven’t read the book, but one interesting reference I’ve read about is that Leda’s last line has been edited. In the film, when her daughters ask where she’s been she says, “I’m alive, actually.”

But in the book, she says, “I’m dead, but I’m fine,” which could technically allude to her health and safety, but also seems to point more to her existence and sanity.

What is life, freedom, and contentment? How does that answer change when a woman has a child to look after?

Does Leda ever find what she was looking for- and was it at home with her daughters all along? The film truly leaves these questions up to the audience to ponder.

The Lost Daughter was written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, based on a novel by Elena Ferrante. It is currently streaming on Netflix.