I finally got rid of Peacock Prime (which managed to show
only one out of seven Liverpool games live) and joined the
dark side (a.k.a. Netflix). The top attraction there is
clearly "The OA." Season one turns out to be even better
than I could hope for and qualifies as one of the greatest
TV series I have seen, although I haven't even finished.
I've seen season two on bootleg DVD (Emmy Award promotion
kits sold on ebay), and now it makes a lot more sense to
me. More on that later.

There are relatively few French films on Netflix, and if
you are looking for auteurist cinema you are mostly out
of luck. _Oxygen_, starring Melanie Laurent, is there,
however. It is clearly one of those shot-during-COVID
videos, with no contact required between actors. Laurent
is strapped into a bio-pod almost the entire film. Not
wearing any makeup, the actress manages to make this
science fiction vehicle completely spell-binding.

I also get to stream _The Lost Daughter_ directed by
Maggie Gyllenhaul. She is an amazingly intelligent and
expressive actress, and her directing debut is visually
far more accomplished than most directed by Anglo-American
actresses. She uses a lot of close-ups and hand-helds
that emphasize the self-involvement of the lead character
Leda, named after a Yeats poem and played by Olivia
Coleman and Jessie Buckley in different time periods.
This is particularly true in the misdirection opening
sequence (which is also the film's end), and in blissful
scenes during Leda's romantic youth, when she ditches
her daughters to live with a scholar in her field of
comparative literature. The love scene editing recalls
_Don't Look Now_ by Nicholas Roeg, and the tactile camera
work is reminiscent of Claire Denis. (The end credits
clearly pay homage to Denis' mid-period style.) In
between, the camera opens up to the sun-drenched vistas
of the Greek beaches on the island where Leonard Cohen
once stayed, just as Leda negotiates her place in the
world among other reluctant young mothers who wish to
have flings, and their husbands/admirers old and young.

There is much to admire in the screenplay. Jessie Buckley
is intense and fiery as the young Leda overwhelmed by the
trials of caring for clingy young daughters while trying
to forge an academic career *and* to carry on an affair.
Dakota Johnson is riveting as a vacationing young mother
and Leda's present-day double. Peter Sarsgaade (Gyllenhaul's
husband) is magnetic as young Leda's lover, and Dagmara
Dominczyk has a great, menacing turn as Dakota Johnson's
aunt. The acting is really great up and down the line
-- except for lead actress Coleman. I usually like
Coleman but really struggle to make sense of what she is
trying to do here. Her character is all over the place
-- wide open, secretive, naive, guarded, generous, mean.
At no point do I find her convincing as an academic
living in Cambridge (teaching at Harvard? or more likely
one of the smaller schools there?). What is this character
like in the novel? In the end I decide that Coleman is
just trying to play Coleman.

The litmus test of good acting is very simple: would the
audience be distracted into mentally recasting the role?
Here Maggie Gyllenhaul (apparently only 3 years younger
than Coleman) would have made a very powerful, cohesive Leda
character. Lena Headey, whom I just saw in _The Flood_,
would have been a very different interpretation -- via
her patented masterclass in understatement. Maria
Valverde is clearly too young for this role, but her
dazzlingly work in Melanie Laurent's _Plonger_, also about
a career woman leaving husband and daughter behind, far
outshines Coleman's. In fact, _The Lost Daughter_ suffers
quite a bit from comparison with _Plonger_. While both
have the same central theme and are shot in and around
the ocean, Gyllenhaul's film is a wistful short story
while Laurent's is an epic poem. It is not a totally
fair comparison, of course. Few recent films warrant
being mentioned in the same breath as Laurent's magnum
opus.

Speaking of actresses who play fractured psyches --
in Laurent's _The Mad Woman's Ball_ Lou de Laage also
seems a different woman in every scene. But her character
can see dead people and struggles to hold herself together,
to appear normal so she won't be incarcerated. Coleman
doesn't have the excuse. Laurent will both act and
direct in _La Grande Odalisque_, which seems a more
light-hearted fare than her usual directorial efforts.
She should work with de Laage again soon.