An excellent, embodied turn from Olivia Colman is no huge surprise these days, but she is particularly magnetic here, in a part that leaves room for interpretation.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 23, 2024

Colman can make Leda simply driving a car seem dramatic, as the expression on her face quietly captures the emotional turmoil she tries so hard to contain. And Gyllenhaal can turn an image of rotting fruit into a jump-scare.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 25, 2022

This is a fine, unsettling film about the cost of the choices we make.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 8, 2022

It addresses the impossible, ordinary, maddening task of keeping both yourself and a child alive.

| Jan 8, 2022

The end is deeply ambiguous, neither punishing nor condoning its characters' behavior. It simply asks us to sit with them - to pay them the respect of attention, and learn something about ourselves in the process.

| Jan 7, 2022

Another fantastic performance by Olivia Colman.

| Jan 7, 2022

With a great central performance from Olivia Colman, it has depth, intelligence and a powerful seriousness of purpose. It's also unfailingly grim, which raises questions about how we respond, as an audience.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 6, 2022

Whatever the conventions and shortcuts of literary adaptation that the movie reflects, Gyllenhaal has thrown down a gauntlet to filmmakers and producers, to the movie industry at large, and to the future of the art.

| Jan 4, 2022

No one says what they mean in Maggie Gyllenhaal's astonishing directorial debut The Lost Daughter, but everything they do say is loaded with meaning.

| Jan 2, 2022

The Lost Daughter, a sharply crafted, clear-eyed interrogation of less-than-likable parents, ebbs and flows on the strength of this reality, along with a few immense performers from its veteran ensemble.

| Dec 31, 2021

"The Lost Daughter" certainly raises as many questions as it answers, which is why it is so gratifying.... Gyllenhaal's film is mysterious too. It sinks its hooks into viewers and does not let go.

| Dec 31, 2021

It's an auspicious debut from Gyllenhaal, who observes every little moment with intense focus, and another riveting performance from Colman, who develops a wrenching portrait of motherhood with quiet, chilling intensity.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 30, 2021

The Lost Daughter is a triumph of adaptation for writer and first-time feature director Maggie Gyllenhaal. Her film, relocating the novel's southern Italian setting to a Greek island, spins a subtle web of intrigue. "Subtle," however, doesn't mean calm.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 30, 2021

Equal parts troubling and affecting, Leda epitomizes a type of woman whose needs are rarely addressed in American mainstream movies. We can dislike her, but we are never permitted to revile her.

| Dec 30, 2021

The Lost Daughter is tough-minded in its emotional approach but Gyllenhaal directs with tenderness and curiosity. She has made a movie that asks a lot of compelling questions, with the biggie being, "Isn't motherhood hard?"

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 30, 2021

Colman brings Ferrante's creation to life with all the withering pathos she deserves. Gyllenhaal catches it handsomely, awe-struck, as if even she didn't know how painfully real this woman Leda could seem or, in Colman's hands, be.

| Dec 27, 2021

Thank Maggie Gyllenhaal, in a stunning debut as director and screenwriter, for creating one of the year's very best movies starring the magnificent Olivia Colman as a mother haunted by her troubled past. This, you do not want to miss.

| Dec 24, 2021

It's quite a high-wire act [director Maggie Gyllenhaal] achieves here.

| Dec 24, 2021

It's the kind of movie that haunts you for a while afterward, like clouds that hang in the sky long after the storm has passed.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 23, 2021

It's a moviegoing experience, sure - and if you need to hear it, one of the best of the year. But it's really a call to compassion, which makes it transcendent.

| Original Score: A | Dec 22, 2021