How Movies Tell You You Are Getting Old

The blasted “younger actor.”

The Lost Daughter, the directorial debut of Maggie Gyllenhaal, is a terrific film. The movie, which you can find in selected theaters now and on Netflix on December 31, is based on the novel by pseudonymous author Elena Ferrante and tells the story of Leda, played by Olivia Colman. Leda is a professor and scholar who takes a beach vacation by herself to Greece, where Leda meets a young mother (Dakota Johnson), her young daughter and her extended family. Their interaction, and Leda’s own internal struggles as a woman, a scholar and especially a mother, inspires Leda to look back at her own life, decisions she has made and what kind a person she once was and what she is now.

It’s a fascinating, prickly little movie that I’d argue marks Gyllenhaal as an incredibly serious director moving forward. (She is an absolute natural.) Colman is particularly strong as a woman who keeps refusing to be put in whatever box everyone in her life, and seemingly everyone in the world, keeps trying to put her in. I’ll be releasing my top 10 films of the year on my Grierson & Leitch podcast this week, and there’s an outstanding chance The Lost Daughter will be on it.

But I don’t want to talk about that right now. I want to talk about the casting.