FILM REVIEW—The Lost Daughter: Can A “Good Enough Mother” Be Good Enough?

by SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD

     The Lost Daughter, an adaptation of a novella by Elena Ferrante with screenplay by Maggie Gyllenhaal, marks Gyllenhaal’s highly ambitious directorial debut, brought to dimensional portrait by a superb ensemble cast. If you are a mother, yearn to be a mother, have had enormous loss as a mother, have experienced conflict about what is asked of you as a mother, or have been or remain in conflict with your mother, Gyllenhaal’s debut will propel you into the recesses of your very being.

     For all in social work and related mental health professions, the self-reflection and examination this film demands sheds light on the impact of our choices, relationships, and direction—and the regret they may have brought. Through this process, our understanding of our clients is enhanced, and what we offer, even when discussions of motherhood are not part of “presenting problems,” is strengthened.

     Through interviews, Gyllenhaal identifies her goals in Lost Daughter. To paraphrase: It is impossible to meet our children’s needs day-in and day-out. Regardless of our love, children cannot be a woman’s entire life.  Gyllenhaal’s frustration: Hollywood depicts motherhood in two ways—the perfect mom, who sacrifices all for her children, and the evil mom who holds her children in disdain. Gyllenhaal’s goal: A far more accurate, “nuanced” portrayal, a goal she meets movingly, and with brilliance. With “Lost” as a recurring theme, The Lost Daughter confronts:

• What does the phrase “natural mother” mean? How does one meet the overload, the “crushing responsibility” of motherhood, and the depression that can accompany unyielding, relentless burden?

• Regardless of how careful a mother is, disaster can occur in a split second. If/when this occurs, how can a mother forgive herself and once again claim life?

• A woman’s sexual desires and capacity for passion are intense during her 30s, the years often filled to the brink with childcare responsibilities. What are a mother’s options when her partner, for varying reasons, cannot respond or is disinterested in responding to her, even as he claims to love her, to need her? And further, how does a young, vibrant woman live with a partner whose life direction and crudeness repulse her, and whose propensity for brutality shuts down her body?

• How can a woman express her intellectual and academic desires, her ambition?

• How does she endure a partner who does not offer “attention, the purist form of generosity,” ignoring her right to expression beyond family nurturing—which begs the question: Can a man be relied upon as a trusted, respectful partner, one who sees his wife as his equal? And parallel questions:  In a sexist society is female choice, expression, fulfillment possible?  Is biology destiny?

• Intense societal roadblocks to a woman’s academic and professional development are firmly in place, and societal rape of women through violation, life defying pitfalls, closed doors to opportunity, and expected/demanded sacrifice are firmly entrenched.

 Symbolism in The Lost Daughter

    As in past reviews, I will frame the plot with no spoilers. This said, a caveat: In discussing the film with clients and friends, many have expressed frustration, describing gaps in character clarity and confusion about both plot and its  resolve. With this in mind, I turn to referenced symbolism offered as clues to the film’s direction and intent.  Two primary symbols are essential to framing:

     First, none is more important than the name, Leda, given the protagonist, a selection recalling the violated woman referenced in the acclaimed 1924 W. B. Yeats poem, Leda and the Swan—a poem rooted in mythology, with both political and sexual connotations. Leda has rejected the sexual advances of Zeus. Determined to have her, Zeus disguises himself as a swan and rapes her. Leda resists, but endures ”a sudden blow,” and becomes “helpless” and “terrified.” The poem depicts horrific violence fully—a conquest reveling in sensuality, where cruelty, domination, pleasure, release, and fulfillment are Zeus’s determined privilege, with Leda rendered powerless.

     Second, visions of an orange appear throughout the film, demonstrating a woman’s conflicts between the demands and expectations of maternal nurturance (the breast becomes an important focus in conversation) and desire for intellectual and sexual fulfillment:  Leda delights her children through her ability to produce a snake by peeling off the skin, revealing sensual maternal delight. The snake warns of dangers of female sexual appeal, familiar since biblical times, as well as the phallic symbol representing opportunities ever denied women, where pursuit can prove deadly. 

Plot Formulation

     The Lost Daughter opens by revealing a scene in the future. On a deserted beach at night, Leda Caruso (Olivia Colman), a 48-year-old college professor and noted translator who teaches in Cambridge, Massachusetts,  dressed entirely in white, has been stabbed, struggles to walk, and collapses. We then move to the present and plot progression, but will return to the beach scene at the film’s culmination.

     Leda journeys to a rented beachfront apartment on the fictional Greek Island, Kyopeli, where she plans to spend the summer concentrating on her translations. Leda is divorced, with two daughters, Bianca and Martha, whom we meet as children through recurring back-flashes to the younger Leda (Jessie Buckley).  

     Leda views her daughters as disinterested in her, uninvolved with her, and uncaring about her—essentially Lost to her.  The reasons for her palpable guilt and shame, reflected in sexual repression and rigidly adhered to intellectualization, are revealed as the plot unfolds.

     Upon arrival to her apartment, Leda is greeted by the caretaker, Lyle (Ed Harris), whose interest in her and attraction to her are apparent. Lyle carries Leda’s luggage, primarily books, to her apartment, where she discovers that welcoming fruit reflects her inner world—decay. Soon after, Leda will face a symbolic injury—a branding, the cost for her youthful expression of passion, leading to self-imposed prison and Lost life.

     On the beach, we are introduced to her young attendant, a desirable 24-year-old Irish business student, Will (Paul Mescal), a meeting leading to intimate conversational sharing. The scene then shifts to a wealthy, noisy, vulgar Greek American family from Queens, whom Will describes as “bad people,” alluding to criminal activities, where loud men and noisy children distract Leda from her attempt to translate Dante’s Paradiso, the third and final depiction of Dante’s journey through a hell Leda knows intimately.

     Leda becomes captivated by the vacationing family, especially the youthful, enticing, and conflicted Nina (Dakota Johnson). Interest leads to involvement when Nina’s 3-year-old daughter Elena wanders off—is Lost. Although Leda finds Elena, the child’s ever-present doll—a key to Leda’s internal life—remains Lost, Elena is bereft. Desperate to ease her daughter’s upset, as well as her own stress, Nina places Lost signs all over the beach.

     Seeing Leda as a maternal figure and trusted confidante, Nina shares marital frustrations and conflicts.  Leda sees how controlled Nina is by her sister-in-law, Callie (Dagmara Dominczyk), an intrusive, pregnant, dominating family matriarch, and learns of the growing sexual intimacy between Nina and Will.

     Through flashbacks, it becomes clear that Nina is, in essence, a younger version of Leda. We meet Leda’s two young daughters, as vulnerable as Elena, whose incessant demands for comfort and attention are exacerbated by constant parental friction. Through these scenes, Leda (like Nina) moves between expressions of intense love for her children and alternating fits of anger and withdrawal, which terrify them.  

Resolve and Message

     The resolve of The Lost Daughter is confusing, leading to differing interpretations of events. This is purposeful. Maggie Gyllenhaal uses symbolism (the orange returns!) to compel women, despite life’s risks, complexities, unfairness, and tragedy to refuse to retreat from a full life and its fulfilling potential. Paradiso marks Dante’s choice to move toward salvation. And although violated, Leda refuses to be destroyed. She births Helen (of Troy), whose abduction eventually leads to the Golden Age of Greece, the country Gyllenhaal selects for her film setting. (In the book, Leda’s holiday takes place in southern Italy.)

     The concluding scene defines all women as Lost until we realize that the demands of motherhood are too vast and overwhelming to ever be fully met, and through this realization accept ourselves as “good enough,” with permission to pursue our personal “golden age”—one where it is as perilous for our children to become our totally comsuming passion as it is for us to cut ourselves off from all else. In this way, Gyllenhaal sheds further light on a film resolve open to interpretation. Our children will forgive us for pain or loss they experience as we live if we are able to forgive ourselves.

SaraKay Smullens, MSW, LCSW, DCSW, CGP, CFLE, BCD, whose private and pro bono clinical social work practice is in Philadelphia, is a certified group psychotherapist and family life educator. She is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award (2004) and the Social Worker of the Year (2018) from the Pennsylvania chapter of NASW, and the 2013 NASW Media Award for Best Article. In 2018, she was one of five graduates of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice selected for the school’s inaugural Hall of Fame. SaraKay is the author of Burnout and Self-Care in Social Work (2nd Edition).