I think there are many nuances one can ascribe to the title of the picture, because after all, every female is someone's daughter, whether acknowledged or not. For a small length of time, a young girl at the beach actually does get lost for a while, but in her calm, assured manner, Leda Caruso (Olivia Colman) locates the child, and returns her to an anxious extended family. But even prior to that event, Leda took an interest in the girl's mother (Dakota Johnson), while drawing comparisons to her own life and the way things turned out for her as a forty eight year old professor of comparative literature. It almost looks as if Leda wants to warn Nina (Johnson) not to make the same mistakes she did in raising her own daughters, which she abandoned for a time due to her own selfishness. A telling moment in Leda's past concerned a flashback in which her older daughter cut a finger as a child, and Leda quite pointedly refused to kiss the crying girl's cut, even though she begged her mother numerous times. That struck me as going out of her way to neglect the child's immediate need for recognition, later highlighted in another flashback during Leda's affair with Professor Hardy (Peter Sarsgaard), who quoted French philosopher Simone Weil - "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity".
The episode with the lost/taken doll was somewhat perplexing. Initially it felt like Leda was going to make some improvement with the doll in the way of a new outfit, but then gets irritated and discards it, retrieves it from the trash, and eventually gives it back to Nina with her confession. Guaging Nina's reaction was puzzling; she had a right to be upset because of the way it unsettled her entire family, but stabbing Leda with the long pin demonstrated an uncontrollable rage that to my mind, outweighed the inconvenience of the missing doll. It would have been a simple matter for Leda to say she wanted to surprise the child, but instead caused more calamity for herself and Nina. Was it a way for Leda to punish herself for her faults as a mother?
Hoping that the long, slow burn of a story would eventually resolve to a comforting conclusion, one will probably be disappointed. The best parallel I can draw is the finale to "No Country for Old Men", in which there is no resolution to the fate of the principal protagonist. I like to think that those type of endings mimic the way real life sometimes happens, with no definitive outcome except the opportunity to move forward, even if unknown to the viewer. If that was director Maggie Gyllenhaal's intent, then she only partially succeeded, since the film's story ends with no constructive lessons offered, and no reconciliation among the main participants.
The episode with the lost/taken doll was somewhat perplexing. Initially it felt like Leda was going to make some improvement with the doll in the way of a new outfit, but then gets irritated and discards it, retrieves it from the trash, and eventually gives it back to Nina with her confession. Guaging Nina's reaction was puzzling; she had a right to be upset because of the way it unsettled her entire family, but stabbing Leda with the long pin demonstrated an uncontrollable rage that to my mind, outweighed the inconvenience of the missing doll. It would have been a simple matter for Leda to say she wanted to surprise the child, but instead caused more calamity for herself and Nina. Was it a way for Leda to punish herself for her faults as a mother?
Hoping that the long, slow burn of a story would eventually resolve to a comforting conclusion, one will probably be disappointed. The best parallel I can draw is the finale to "No Country for Old Men", in which there is no resolution to the fate of the principal protagonist. I like to think that those type of endings mimic the way real life sometimes happens, with no definitive outcome except the opportunity to move forward, even if unknown to the viewer. If that was director Maggie Gyllenhaal's intent, then she only partially succeeded, since the film's story ends with no constructive lessons offered, and no reconciliation among the main participants.