Maggie Gyllenhaal Casts Olivia Colman and Dakota Johnson in Her New Movie, Because She Loves Us

Maggie Gyllenhaal is stepping behind the camera with The Lost Daughter, the forthcoming film adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s 2008 novel that Gyllenhaal has scripted and is set to direct under indie production company Pie Films, per Deadline.

In a move seemingly specifically designed to break Film Twitter, Gyllenhaal has tapped Olivia Colman and Dakota Johnson to star, two women who give off a potent and magnetic “admire me from afar” aura … whose eyes tell you they know more than you do … whose mothers must have told them if they kept wryly smirking so much their faces would freeze like that … with the shared energy of the beautiful cat that slinks around your apartment building eyeing you but won’t let you get too close. The varsity team of a cast also includes Peter Sarsgaard and Jessie Buckley.

The story follows Leda (Colman), a professor and divorced mother of two, on a solo vacation to coastal Italy, where relaxation (which we are optimistically picturing as Colman in cat-eye sunglasses laid up on a chaise lounge drinking a mimosa, in the exact vein of “Fabulous” from feminist masterwork High School Musical 2) gives way to unsettling encounters with a menacing nearby family. According to the book’s official synopsis, Leda becomes “overwhelmed by memories of the difficult and unconventional choices she made as a mother and their consequences for herself and her family.”