Are all women made to be mothers? This is the question that asks The Lost Daughter, directorial debut by actress Maggie Gyllenhaal available on Netflix this Friday. Three remarkable actresses, Dakota Johnson, Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley, help her tell this story to the award-winning screenplay in Venice after being inspired par Stolen doll by Elena Ferrante.
“I am a mother and happy to be, but that did not proselyte me,” explains Maggie Gyllenhaal to 20 minutes. I have known too many women who had an idealized vision of motherhood and who have been overtaken by reality to believe that it is obligatory to give birth. »Her heroine, played by Olivia Colman, revisits her chaotic past as a mother, a brilliant academic overwhelmed between two young girls, when she meets a young vacationer and her little girl.
“Motherhood is a taboo that is still so difficult to extricate even for the youngest women who must always undergo the injunction of society to become a mother as soon as possible,” insists Maggie Gyllenhaall. The action isolates the characters on a Greek island whose paradisiacal landscapes paradoxically add to the sinister side of the whole. “Maggie knew how to communicate the weight which mother on the shoulders of the heroines, explains Dakota Johnson to 20 minutes. The mother that I embody is not a bad person: she is just overwhelmed by her family life. »A situation that will not help the disappearance of the beloved toy of his little girl who becomes more and more difficult to manage after this theft.
The flashbacks to the past of the heroine (whose young version is brilliantly played by Jessie Buckley) allow us to better accept the reactions of these women stuck in lives that do not always suit them. “My goal is to show those who do not feel comfortable in their role as mom, that they are not alone in this case,” insists Maggie Gyllenhaal. His direction of actresses (and actors including Peter Skarsgard, her husband in the city, and Ed Harris), is for a lot in the emotions felt in front of this first feature film. “It’s a story of women who puts them forward, but I think it can also be fascinating for men who want to understand them better”, insists Dakota Johnson.