The Lost Daughter (2021)
Figure I need to start giving ratings even if only for so I can look back and see so here goes with my first one: 5/5
I found this film properly tense and stressful — the anxiety lying underneath the surface of every interaction makes the film thrilling, despite its truly mundane story. It’s a real psychological thriller, but what I think really delivers about this story is that the slow burn never explodes. It just continues to burn until it doesn’t anymore.
The acting was superb. The conversations and characters were strange and there was something unnerving about each moment. It wasn’t overt, as though characters were explicitly evil, but rather that they were just sociopathic enough that sitting there listening was stressful.
I loved how Olivia Colman’s own background was revealed to us as we went through the story. Playing with time like that, especially through the use of memories, lets the audience feel a huge range of conflicting emotions about Colman’s Leda. People treat each other horribly in really everyday ways and lose patience and are mean, but this is a really humanistic retelling of those events. The memories feel like that, hazy and emotionally charged like real life never is.
Fundamentally, I think it’s a good story about flawed parenting and flawed humans. All that makes the ending touching, because it’s wholly unexpected. It’s easy to remember the worst of who you are and how you treat people, but that doesn’t define your relationship any further than you let it.
