BEFORE: I had an opportunity to see this movie back in December, there was a screening of it at the theater where I work part-time, but I was managing the screening and the panel afterwards, with Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dakota Johnson and Peter Sarsgaard. Since I had to focus on making sure the guests were escorted from the green room to the theater, and properly cued to go on stage at the right time, I really couldn't perform these duties and also watch the film - so I just did my job and figured I'd catch the film at a later date, which is now here.
Jessie Buckley carries over from "The Courier". I did figure out another way to get here, because that other film on my list with Benedict Cumbernbatch also has Olivia Colman in it, that would also link to either this film or tomorrow's Father's Day film - since I don't want to add an extra day, now I'm going to take a pass on "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain" and try to reschedule THAT one. But my fear now is that this film is about motherhood, so I could justify dropping it, and keeping it on hand for Mother's Day next year...Nah, I waited long enough to view this one, let me just watch it and cross it off the list. I can find more films about mothers between now and next May - the cast here is somewhat eclectic, so the chances of circling back to any of these actors seems just a bit remote. You just never know, though.
THE PLOT: A woman's beach vacation takes a dark turn when she begins to confront the troubles of her past.
AFTER: I guess we should all be aware of any movie that calls itself a "psychological drama", because that could mean something like "Fight Club", but it also could just be code for a film that's confusing and very inaccessible. Seriously, at the end of this film, I found myself asking, "But what was that ABOUT?" Maybe the problem is that I've never been a parent, because the main character here watches a family with a daughter while on vacation, and flashes back to her experiences raising her two daughters, some memories that were good, and others, not so much. But as for me, I've just got no frame of reference...
Sure, it's tough to be a mother, I get that. It's tough to be married, too, which is why a lot of people call it quits - people sort of quit being parents, too, that's another thing that happens. Society tends to just say, "Oh, he's a bad father" or "She's clearly a bad mother..." but is that too simple? Kids are annoying, parents get frustrated, I won't resort to victim-blaming, but maybe some part of me misses the time when parents could discipline their children. A kid could probably LEARN something from a spanking, that's all I'm saying, but thinking that way isn't popular and is considered outdated.
Anyway, back to "The Lost Daughter" - Leda Caruso is on holiday in the Greek isles, when a very large family comes to the same resort, and they're obnoxious, at least at first, asking people to move down the beach so they can all sit together. Maybe it's because I live in New York City, but I'd never ask anybody to move in a restaurant or on a beach, that's not cool - we're trained in NYC not to engage with others unless absolutely necessary. But when a young mother's three-year-old daughter goes missing from the beach, Leda flashes back to a time when she was a young mother herself, and couldn't find one of her daughters at a beach.
As the story moves on, Leda sees other aspects of her own past reflected in the other mother. Leda broke up with her husband and walked away from her daughters for three years, and so when she sees Nina engaged in an affair, maybe she feels that Nina's headed down a similar path that she went down, but for some reason (perhaps because she's British) Leda doesn't feel comfortable giving Nina life advice. But, like, wouldn't that be THE POINT of her seeing her mistakes reflected in another person's choices? Why show her being aware of another person's potential errors, if she doesn't take any steps to correct them? In other words, so FREAKING what?
Leda, helps find Nina's lost daughter, but then, for some reason, takes the young girl's favorite doll. WHY? There's a flashback that shows Leda's daughter ruining one of her dolls, does Leda feel that the universe owes her a doll, twenty years later? Or is a symbol of a happier (?) time with her own daughters, or a symbol of her past, the lost time she spent away from her children? It's all a bit unclear and obscure.
Same goes for the flashbacks that show Leda's affair with a fellow professor - what is the point? I'm trying to read between the lines here, but I can't help but think that I either missed something, or perhaps there's nothing there to miss. What did the rotten fruit symbolize, for example? Or the pine cone? Clearly these elements were supposed to mean something, but I have no idea what. It sort of ends up feeling like the director set out to intentionally confuse people, but I know that can't be right.
NITPICK POINT: I know that love and relationships often don't seem to make sense, but to have a character say, "My husband is much too controlling and jealous, that's why I'm having an affair..." Yeah, that's probably not going to help with his control issues - if anything, it's going to send him off the deep end. It's probably better to deal with the control issues first, just saying.
Also starring Olivia Colman (last heard in "Ron's Gone Wrong"), Dakota Johnson (last seen in "The High Note"), Ed Harris (last seen in "Geostorm"), Dagmara Dominczyk (last seen in "The Count of Monte Cristo"), Paul Mescal, Robyn Elwell, Ellie Blake, Peter Sarsgaard (last heard in "Robot & Frank"), Jack Farthing (last seen in "Official Secrets"), Oliver Jackson-Cohen (last seen in "Faster"), Panos Koronis (last seen in "Before Midnight"), Alexandros Mylonas, Nikos Poursanidis, Alba Rohrwacher (last seen in "Tale of Tales"), Athena Martin Anderson, Alma Stansil, Vassilis Koukalani, Ellie James, Isabelle Della-Porta with archive footage of Elizabeth Taylor (last seen in "Zeroville")
RATING: 4 out of 10 lounge chairs
No comments:
Post a Comment