A woman (this woman, Leda Caruso, played by Olivia Colman) needs a partner, motherhood, career, and intellectual growth in her passion for literature and languages. One could say she loves all these. But when in 24 hours/day to give her attention to them all? These are the forces --forces of love, mainly-- that tear at a young Leda, married, scholar, and mother of two. She can't pursue them all.
In other stories, the heroine would make one definitive choice, would give it all up for carreer, or for children, or for the love of a partner. Leda juggles them, as most real mothers would. She makes choices, she keeps pursuing some or other of her needs, of her jobs, at the expense of the rest. Her fullfilment is tinged with the guilt for the other parts of her life that do not get her atttention. "...you are paying attention.." somebody tells her, in a rare moment when she is free to immerse herself completely in the moment. And we see how splendid it would be if only Leda was allowed to truly pay attention to everything that matters to her.
In the movie, Leda is now 48, a professor of comparative literature, with two grown daughters. On a vacation, encountering a young mother, Nina, and witnessing the fraught way Nina is handling the tensions in her own life, Leda re-lives her own far from perfect choices. Her has had a career, she is in a possibly healthy relationships with her daughters, she is single, she is socially uneasy, like a foreigner. The "foreignness" with her compatriots contrasts with her ease and passion for translating poetry. (I wish the story will tell us what happened to her love for poetry and Italian translation. Is that still part of her life?) Thus, Leda has had a moderatly good life by her own standards. Yet just under the surface, the regrets and guilt for the times she turned away from her daughters continue to haunt her. Regrets for the choices consciously made, but also for unintentional hurts, like breaking a doll. The doll that passes from hand to hand, loved without demanding anything, or maybe satisfying a child without having to do anything, seems to be a symbol for the perpetual (idealized and yet organic) need for motherhood that flows through every woman from Leda's mother down to the little Elena.
But it's not the doll, abstract image of motherhood, that bonds mothers and daughters. It's the small special things like a floppy hat, an orange peel that looks like a snake, a snippet of Italian verse.
Interestingly, even now, Leda resents interruptions. The rowdy family, Lyle's attentions, are rebuked because they come at a time when Leda is immersed in something else. Much of her insociability stems from defending her need to live a life in her own head, to control where she gives her attention.
There are many things that confuse me -- along with other viewers. *Spoilers start here*. The ending seems tacked on. Are we to understand that the daughters have no resentment, no scars from losing their mother for three years? Are we to understand that this is just another of the juggling acts that Leda had to do all her life? Why is there no Italian poetry in the present? By this I mean did Leda's needs change with time? Are we seeing somebody who looks back to the imperfect ways she handled an impossible situation, or are we seeing somebody who now regrets having loved literature as much as she loved her children? There are echoes of Leda's mother but I'm not sure what to make of them. Young Leda despises her mother, yet she is attached to the doll. The mother raises Leda's daughters, and in the near final scene Leda is stabbed with a hat pin from her mother. Why? The setting is in Greece but everyone, absolutely everyone, is speaking English. You expect some language or cultural barrier, especially when the heroine is a translator, but no. Or you expect a foreigner to bring forward a new perspective. But no,again. This is very confusing. Why not set the story in Florida? Is Lyle another mirror image of Leda? Single, foreigner, playing a small part in the lives of his grown up children. Why "Leda"? Why the parallels to Death in Venice? They don't seem to mesh well with the other sides of the movie. They also seem a bit superficial. In DiV, the hero discovers a side of himself he had never acknowledged, evolves, then dies. Here, Leda does not discover anything about herself, it's only the viewers who do. And you believe that she might die, but she goes on living just as before. And who is the lost daughter? For the first part of the movie, perhaps influenced by Death in Venice, I thought Nina is somehow Leda's lost daughter, that the silent flow Leda-Nina will become an axis for the movie. But then, half way through the movie, the doll made its entrance and took over. So, my best guess is that there is no lost daughter, only lost mothers.
Back to the main point I take from "the lost daughter" is that human beings need more than one kind of love to feel complete. And having children is at the same time an incredibly big part of life's fortunes, and a relentless interruption from being fullfilled as a person.
In other stories, the heroine would make one definitive choice, would give it all up for carreer, or for children, or for the love of a partner. Leda juggles them, as most real mothers would. She makes choices, she keeps pursuing some or other of her needs, of her jobs, at the expense of the rest. Her fullfilment is tinged with the guilt for the other parts of her life that do not get her atttention. "...you are paying attention.." somebody tells her, in a rare moment when she is free to immerse herself completely in the moment. And we see how splendid it would be if only Leda was allowed to truly pay attention to everything that matters to her.
In the movie, Leda is now 48, a professor of comparative literature, with two grown daughters. On a vacation, encountering a young mother, Nina, and witnessing the fraught way Nina is handling the tensions in her own life, Leda re-lives her own far from perfect choices. Her has had a career, she is in a possibly healthy relationships with her daughters, she is single, she is socially uneasy, like a foreigner. The "foreignness" with her compatriots contrasts with her ease and passion for translating poetry. (I wish the story will tell us what happened to her love for poetry and Italian translation. Is that still part of her life?) Thus, Leda has had a moderatly good life by her own standards. Yet just under the surface, the regrets and guilt for the times she turned away from her daughters continue to haunt her. Regrets for the choices consciously made, but also for unintentional hurts, like breaking a doll. The doll that passes from hand to hand, loved without demanding anything, or maybe satisfying a child without having to do anything, seems to be a symbol for the perpetual (idealized and yet organic) need for motherhood that flows through every woman from Leda's mother down to the little Elena.
But it's not the doll, abstract image of motherhood, that bonds mothers and daughters. It's the small special things like a floppy hat, an orange peel that looks like a snake, a snippet of Italian verse.
Interestingly, even now, Leda resents interruptions. The rowdy family, Lyle's attentions, are rebuked because they come at a time when Leda is immersed in something else. Much of her insociability stems from defending her need to live a life in her own head, to control where she gives her attention.
There are many things that confuse me -- along with other viewers. *Spoilers start here*. The ending seems tacked on. Are we to understand that the daughters have no resentment, no scars from losing their mother for three years? Are we to understand that this is just another of the juggling acts that Leda had to do all her life? Why is there no Italian poetry in the present? By this I mean did Leda's needs change with time? Are we seeing somebody who looks back to the imperfect ways she handled an impossible situation, or are we seeing somebody who now regrets having loved literature as much as she loved her children? There are echoes of Leda's mother but I'm not sure what to make of them. Young Leda despises her mother, yet she is attached to the doll. The mother raises Leda's daughters, and in the near final scene Leda is stabbed with a hat pin from her mother. Why? The setting is in Greece but everyone, absolutely everyone, is speaking English. You expect some language or cultural barrier, especially when the heroine is a translator, but no. Or you expect a foreigner to bring forward a new perspective. But no,again. This is very confusing. Why not set the story in Florida? Is Lyle another mirror image of Leda? Single, foreigner, playing a small part in the lives of his grown up children. Why "Leda"? Why the parallels to Death in Venice? They don't seem to mesh well with the other sides of the movie. They also seem a bit superficial. In DiV, the hero discovers a side of himself he had never acknowledged, evolves, then dies. Here, Leda does not discover anything about herself, it's only the viewers who do. And you believe that she might die, but she goes on living just as before. And who is the lost daughter? For the first part of the movie, perhaps influenced by Death in Venice, I thought Nina is somehow Leda's lost daughter, that the silent flow Leda-Nina will become an axis for the movie. But then, half way through the movie, the doll made its entrance and took over. So, my best guess is that there is no lost daughter, only lost mothers.
Back to the main point I take from "the lost daughter" is that human beings need more than one kind of love to feel complete. And having children is at the same time an incredibly big part of life's fortunes, and a relentless interruption from being fullfilled as a person.