Gianni. Professor Hardy: Esteemed Anglicist and Leda's lover for a time. Reception The book was well received by the critics. A main theme pointed out is that of what Leda calls "unnatural mothers", meaning on how she breaks "some of the sacred taboos of motherhood by putting her needs and ambitions before those of her daughters". Both the novel and the film adaptation manage to show the relation between a mother and a small child as simbiotic, but sufficating. By showing a talented young woman's despair at being closed at home, the novel allows us to rethink motherhood. According to critics: "This is Ferrante's devastating power as a novelist: she navigates the emotional minefields and unsparingly tallies the cycle of psychological damage among multiple generations of women in Leda's family in straightforward, almost curt language". The doll stolen by Leda gains great dramatic importance, as critics have pointed out: "The doll is an emotional Rosetta stone, unleashing a flood of memories from Leda's own unhappy childhood, including her mother's endless threats to leave and her unhappy adulthood". Several critics have also pointed out the similarity in themes with the most famous Neapolitan Novels, as a story between two women, one of which is an academic who leaves her daughters for a while, and the other is a young mother married to what others call "a bad man". Adaptation In 2018, Maggie Gyllenhaal acquired the rights to adapt Elena Ferrante's novel. In the same year, while the movie was still being produced, Elena Ferrante wrote about the adaptation in her column in The Guardian, saying that the story was "now hers [Gylenhaal's] to tell". The column was later published in her non-fiction book, Incidental Inventions. Gylenhaal wrote and directed the film adaptation, which starred Olivia Colman, Jessie Buckley, Dakota Johnson, Peter Sarsgaard, Ed Harris and Paul Mescal. The Lost Daughter premiered at the 78th Venice International Film Festival on September 3, 2021, where Gyllenhaal won the Golden Osella Award for Best Screenplay. It had a limited theatrical release in the United States on December 17, 2021, prior to streaming on Netflix on December 31. The film was acclaimed by critics, and at the 94th Academy Awards received three nominations: Best Actress (Colman), Best Supporting Actress (Buckley), and Best Adapted Screenplay. References 2006 novels Novels by Elena Ferrante Italian novels adapted into films