Actor's party in the nervous drama The lost daughter

Indie queen

Maggie Gyllenhall's feature film debut as a director received standing ovations after the premiere at the Venice Film Festival this autumn.

Totally well deserved.

She is as sharp a director as she is an actress.

The lost daughter is a film adaptation of Elena Ferrante's (best known for the Naples Quartet) novel of the same title but has none of the sad book adaptation's sad accounting character.

Instead, it is a low-intensity, threateningly simmering thing.

The logic is emotional rather than dramaturgical.

Olivia Colman

makes Leda, a British literature professor who indulges for a few weeks on a Greek island that is a bit away from the usual tourist traps.

Already on the first day, sitting on her deck chair on a half-deserted beach, she is invaded by a large family of grumpy Greek-born Brooklyn residents.

Since Leda is a withdrawn and avog type, it cuts directly with the strangers, but later when the little girl Elena disappears, and is found by just Leda, the relationships quickly thaw.

Leda, who obviously has tons of old rubbish in her mental backpack, is fascinated by the relationship between Elena and her mother, which evokes memories of her own time as a parent of small children, and they are not entirely rosy.

Intricate emotions bounce back and forth, within her, around her.

A quiet emotional chaos.

Not much really happens

, but the more it is hinted at, sketched, and the real tension lies in the confused expectation of how Leda will tackle given situations.

In some moments, she probably does not know herself why she acts as she does, such as when she without explanation takes Elena's favorite doll and hides it in her hotel room.

And what happened to Leda's own children?

Everything is in one way or another about motherhood, not least its torments.

About not being able to live up to the classic mother role - but nothing here is crystal clear, the information is gradually sprinkled out.

, it is crammed with metaphors that pave the way for Leda's interior and history.

Like her habit of peeling an orange in one piece, waiting for the snake-like shell to burst, like that black mask crawling out of the doll's mouth, like the scene where she explains the word navel to her daughters.

Olivia Colman gives Leda's divided mind full justice - she can go and get the Oscar statuette already now - and in retrospect the main character is made by Jessie Buckley (I´m thinking of ending things) who in recent years has emerged as a real indie favorite.

an actor's party with supporting names like Ed Harris, Dakota Johnson and Paul Mescal (Normal People).

But the big star here is still Maggie Gyllenhaal.

It was a long time since I saw such a confident and daring narrated debut - who also trusts that the audience has enough IQ to add one and one, and get the sum three.