Female Film Critics 24/375
One of the pleasures of watching movies is spotting a newcomer who shines. That is the case with Cha Cha Real Smooth,”whose stupid title comes from DJ Casper’s Cha Cha Slide, heard ad nauseam at receptions. Cooper Raiff wrote, directed, and stars in this awfully sweet film. To call a movie “sweet” is to damn it with the faintest of praise. But Cha Cha Real Smooth really is sweet.
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At first blush, I thought the coming-of-age drama Cha Cha Real Smooth sounded like one of those tiring “manic pixie dream girl” narratives, with an aimless college graduate curing his ennui through a friendship with a mother and her autistic daughter. But filmmaker Cooper Raiff, who stars here as well as writes and directs, surprises with something more subtle and nuanced. It’s not just the graduate who matures during this friendship. The mom does too, with a tender, complex performance from Dakota Johnson.
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One great blessing of the current trend toward diversity and inclusion is that Netflix green-lit this scathingly honest psychological exploration of the ambivalence of motherhood, trusting actress Maggie Gyllenhaal to make her auspicious directing debut unraveling its psychological complexity.
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Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal has given many fine performances, including Secretary, The Kindergarten Teacher, and the daring television series The Deuce for which she produced twenty-five episodes. Now as director of her first film, The Lost Daughter, Gyllenhaal advances her resume with a courageous, provocative immersion into the psyche of Leda, a middle-aged English professor on a writing holiday in Greece.
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A meditation on the tension between motherhood and personal identity, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s feature directorial debut The Lost Daughter — adapted from Elena Ferrante’s same-named novel — is frank in its admission that, for all of its rewards, parenting can be a pretty rough gig. No one knows that more than Leda (Olivia Colman, in a stellar performance), whose life choices come back to haunt her during what’s intended to be a relaxing Greek vacation.
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There is a reason why British actress Olivia Colman, at the age of 47, is hitting her prime right now. Ever since she won an Best Actress Oscar for her role as England’s forlornly ditzy and rabbit-adoring Queen Anne in The Favourite, she’s become an English version of Meryl Streep. There seems to be nothing she can’t do. Whether it’s her unusual role as the daughter of a dementia sufferer played by the Anthony Hopkins in last year’s The Father, which led to a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod or her Emmy-winning portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II on TV’s The Crown. Then there is her horridly demeaning godmother and eventual stepmother of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character on Fleabag, which earned Colman a supporting spot on the 2019 Emmy ballot.
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Maggie Gyllenhaal’s screenwriting and directorial feature debut elicits visceral feelings, some of them unpleasant. She would probably say that’s one of the points of her psychological drama, which she adapted from the novel by Elena Ferrante. The story centers on Leda Caruso (Olivia Colman, spectacular as always) who goes on a seaside vacation, only to become obsessed with young mother Nina (Dakota Johnson) and her toddler-aged daughter. Her fascination with the two brings back memories of her own life as a stressed-out, overextended, and largely unhappy young mother (played in flashbacks by Jessie Buckley).
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You cannot ignore Maggie Gyllenhaal’s stunning directorial debut. The Lost Daughter finds Leda (Olivia Colman), a middle-aged professor on holiday, reminiscing about the early years of motherhood. When a mother and young daughter down the beach catch her attention, she cannot help but live and relive vicariously through them. Based on the novel by Elena Ferrante and adapted for the screen by Gyllenhaal, this complex and brutal look at the maternal instinct will strike your rawest nerve.
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On a solo holiday to a Greek Island, literature professor Leda (Olivia Colman) finds herself both fascinated and repelled by the brash extended family that shares her local beach, encroaching on her space and hijacking her attention. When a child from the family goes missing, it is Leda, level-headed in the crisis, who finds her. But this act invites unbidden memories of her own decisions as a mother, choices that she wrestles with even now, nearly 20 years later.
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Too bad Charles Dickens has dibs on the title Our Mutual Friend. It would have worked perfectly for Our Friend – which played at Toronto International Film Festival 2019 as The Friend.. The latter is what Matthew Teague titled his Esquire magazine article about his wife’s losing battle with cancer – and their best friend’s role in helping them deal with the agonizing reality. This screen adaptation adaptation ricochets through the years so relentlessly you need a spreadsheet to chart who’s who, who’s where – and why they keep saying things everybody already knows.
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