- The Lost Daughter
2021-Drama/Psychological drama – 2h 1m, 3-in scale: 1-5,
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Interpretations: Dakota Johnson, Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Ed Harris, Paul Mescal, Peter Sarsgaard.
The directorial debut of the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal is a modest as well as well-made film, which knows how to exploit its assets. The most important of these is of course the presence of the Oscar-winning Olivia Colman, who plays Leda, a penniless British academic, who arrives on the Greek island of Spetses for a lonely vacation. There, however, he will meet Nina (Dakota Johnson), a young mother, who is also vacationing with her rowdy company and unruly daughter.
The relationship between them will trigger a series of memories in Leda, from the time when she too was a new mother and the sacrifices she had to make. As we said, Maggie Gyllenhaal puts the faces of her actors in the frame again and again, thus succeeding in creating dramatic tension, even where there is none. Elena Ferrante’s novel of the same name, on which the script is based, certainly has such elements, but the thriller atmosphere that emerges from time to time in the film – the rotten fruit in the bowl, the falling pinecone, the insect in the bed, etc. – makes it more exciting and interesting.
Other than that, what we have here is essentially a story about motherhood, but not that of the pink cloud and absolute happiness, but that of the difficult side, which is probably closer to modern reality. Seeing Nina tormented somewhere between the whims of the little girl and the instability of her husband, Leda mentally travels back to the time when she was raising her two daughters, while at the same time trying to follow her personal academic dreams. In these frequent flashbacks, action is taken by the always excellent Jessie Buckley, who helps us to understand in depth the current state of the heroine.
All of the above does not mean that Gyllenhaal’s film is flawless. On the contrary, its pace is not always ideal, while the script also steps on several conveniences in order to unfold. On the other hand, these have less importance in front of the central meanings of the story: the concept of sacrifice, love, selfless and not, and in general the complex, almost mysterious of human bonds.
- RISE
2022-Biography – 1h 53m, 3-in scale: 1-5,
Director: Akin Omotoso, Interpretations: Uche Agada, Dayo Okeniyi, Yetide Badaki, Manish Dayal.
The film on the story of the Antetokounmpo family has finally landed on the Disney+ platform and it lives up to the occasion. Although shot almost entirely in Greece, the film by Nigerian director Akin Omotoso begins its action in Lagos, where Charles and Veronica Antetokounmpo leave behind their first-born son Francis in order to take the path of immigration. Then, after a short stopover from Istanbul, the couple crossed the border into Greece where the family soon grew to include four more boys as the Antetokounmpo’s struggled to make ends meet, doing whatever work they could get their hands on.
At the same time, however, to fight the constant threat of the irregular immigrant, but also the racism that is rampant in the streets of Athens. Disney and the cast of the film, which includes Antetokounmpo himself, choose to make a film dedicated much more to the value of family and its unbreakable bonds than to basketball or anything else. In addition, the African heritage that is part of Antetokounmpo’s identity blends beautifully with the Greek landscape and the sun under which the future NBA stars grew up.
