The new trailer for Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter goes full psychological thriller.
The trailer for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s film adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter has been released—and apparently it’s going full psychological horror. Olivia Colman plays Leda, who on a seaside vacation becomes entranced by young mother Nina (Dakota Johnson) and her children—and starts down the rabbit hole of her own memory. The fear factor ratchets up quickly in the trailer, animating the novel’s tightly plotted tension: ambient drone! Shaky close-ups! Children weeping! An orange peeled with a knife! Happy Halloween!
The Lost Daughter is Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, and it looks like she’s killing it so far: its premiere received a four-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival. Gyllenhaal said at the New Yorker Festival she wrote a letter to Ferrante asking if she could adapt the novel, and Ferrante said she could—if she directed it herself. Said Ferrante herself in The Guardian, “Gyllenhaal has decided . . . to give cinematic form not to my experience of the world but to hers, starting from The Lost Daughter. It’s important to me—for her, for all women—that her work be hers and turn out well.” If this trailer’s any indication, it seems like it has.
Watch the eerie trailer below: