Maggie Gyllenhaal has dangerous ideas about directing

NEW YORK (NYTIMES) - Maggie Gyllenhaal has never shied away from difficult roles. The actor has been pushing boundaries for years with performances of complicated characters like an assistant playing sadomasochistic games with her boss (Secretary), the daughter of an arms dealer caught up in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (The Honorable Woman) and a sex worker in 1970s New York (The Deuce).

But it's the job of director and screenwriter of The Lost Daughter, an adaptation of Elena Ferrante's novel of the same title, that may be her riskiest role yet.

The film, set on a sun-drenched Greek island, stars Olivia Colman as Leda, a middle-aged literature professor on a solo working vacation who gets entangled with a young mother, Nina, played by Dakota Johnson.

As she becomes more involved with Nina and her sprawling family, Leda's past and the decisions she made as a younger woman seep into the present, with strange and at times deeply disturbing results.

Already, the Netflix film, which won best screenplay at the Venice Film Festival, has attracted awards season attention. Last month the film won four Gotham Awards, including best feature.

Over a long lunch in New York, Gyllenhaal talked about being a female director today, taboos around motherhood and what it means to translate Ferrante to film.

I started with the Neapolitan novels. She was talking about things I had almost never heard expressed before. Oh, my God, this woman is so messed up, and then within 10 seconds of that, thinking I really relate to her, and so am I so messed up, or is this something that many people feel but that we're not talking about? I found it ultimately both disturbing but also really comforting because if someone else has written it down, you think, oh, I'm not alone in what I thought was a secret anxiety or terror, or even the other side of the spectrum, the intensity of joy and connection.

Then I read The Lost Daughter, and I thought, what if instead of all of us having that experience of feeling alone in our rooms, what if I could create a situation where it was communal, where these things were actually spoken out loud?

I found that adapting actually used a similar muscle to the one that I have used as an actress in terms of taking a text, whether it's excellent or has got problems, and figuring out the essence of this piece of material. I also really did do what (Ferrante permitted) and changed many, many things, but I really believe that the script and the film are really in conversation with the book.

Leda is a writer and showing her ambition in her early years is a big part of the movie. Did you see Bergman Island this year? Both movies wrestle with the question of whether you can fully be a woman and an artist at the same time.

I do believe there's such a thing as women's writing and women's filmmaking. There are really interesting feminist women who do not agree with me.

I think that when women express themselves honestly, it looks differently than when men express themselves honestly. This is really dangerous to talk about.

When I am let loose, given a little bit of money and space to tell the story I want to tell, it's about motherhood. It is about the domestic, and it does include a lot of scenes in the kitchen.

I'm educated and I've got a professional life, and yet my identification as a mother is a massive part of me.

Fellini and Lucrecia Martel, who is also not ever literal. I love Claire Denis. I've talked a lot about Jane Campion and David Lynch.

And then I didn't really work with him, but I did a weeklong reading of a play with Mike Nichols. He loved his actors and he taught me. I remember reading (in the recent biography Mike Nichols: A Life) about him saying, "I'm so sorry if you don't want to shoot Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? in black and white. Then you should find another director. I'm going to leave."

There were a couple of times with this film where I had to say, "This is wrong." We were going to shoot in New Jersey, but that was wrong. I'm like, "I don't know what to tell you."