Programa de Educação Tutorial dos Cursos de Letras da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Vítor Pluceno Behnck
Bolsista PET-Letras
Letras Inglês 

The sun carefully shines over the rocks and the blue sea. In the sand, Leda sits on a sun lounger while she takes notes. She is a middle-aged comparative literature professor taking a holiday in a coastal town in Greece, aiming to enjoy the serenity of her own company. While she enjoys an ice cream by the sea, a noisy and large Italian family arrives on the beach, disturbing her peace and tranquility. This is the main plot of The Lost Daughter (2021), a Netflix original production directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, and based on the homonymous novel written by Elena Ferrante. Starring Olivia Colman as Leda, the movie had received three nominations for the Oscar 2022.

Source: Netflix.

The Lost Daughter aims to depicture a different view on maternity — and how conflictual and harmful it can be. Leda first overlaps her personal history with the Italians when Nina, a young mother, loses her daughter out of sight: at this moment, Leda has a flashback when she also lost one of her daughters — Bianca — on a beach as well. This is one of the many moments in the movie where Gyllenhaal used a narrative element called “psychological time” to travel through Leda’s thoughts and memories. This way, we are presented to the twenty-something almost divorced Leda, dealing with the weight of being (such as Nina is) a young mother, and at the same time, trying to build her academic trajectory.

The distance when traveling to international congresses, the articles written while taking care of her children, and the conflicts with her children’s father are some of the elements that represent how non-glorious maternity can be. This representation contrasts with how media uses to represent mothers — which are always cheerful and ready to abdicate their personalities and lives on behalf of their children and spouse. Thus, the movie narrates another side of being a mother, which can be seen as mean or perverse. Going on a holiday and having to deal with your own wounded self from the past was certainly not a piece of cake for Leda.

The Lost Daughter is, indeed, a captivating and not-obvious narrative. As daughters and sons, it is inevitable to watch the movie and do not think about how many times our mothers put themselves on a second place on behalf of us and the home “duties”. To acknowledge this sacrifices is not about feeling guilty for being born. In fact, it more has to do with reconsidering how do we see women, specifically mothers, in our society. Some of the questions that need to be addressed are: would things be different for Leda if her husband took care of the kids, as women usually do? How would it be if they had the same social expectations for raising their children — that is: how would it be if Leda was not seen as selfish? As Ferrante (2008, p. 1) wrote, “the hardest things to talk about are the ones we ourselves can’t understand”. That is why maybe society can not talk about the taboos behind being a mother: we still can not understand it.

References
FERRANTE, Elena. The Lost Daughter. New York, NY: Europa Editions. 1 ed. 2008.

Verbal description: Leda is a white woman with short and brown hair. She wears a white beach outfit and sits in a white sun lounger at the beach. She holds an ice cream with her right hand while her left hand is in behind her head. She looks to her right side with a disapproving face. Behind her we can see the sand, the sidewalk and some trees.