Blue Christmas gifts

 

 Olivia Colman and Dakota Johnson in “The Lost Daughter.” Netflix image via IMDB.

For folks who mark the holidays by going into a funk, here are a couple of new movie award contenders to speed you on your way.

“The Lost Daughter” is the one that landed Olivia Colman in the best actress race at the Golden Globes. Like a future Judi Dench, there seems to be no role Colman can't make her own, picking up award nominations whenever she's anywhere around a camera, and helping her co-stars and collaborators win nominations, too.

In this case that collaborator would be Maggie Gyllenhaal, earning her nomination in her directorial debut after all the exciting things she's done as an actress. Gyllenhaal also wrote the screenplay, adapted from a 2006 novel by Elena Ferrante.

It follows Leda, a classics professor and translator on holiday to a small beach resort village in Greece where she's got work to do while working on her tan. Despite the sunny clime (when it's not raining), there are small moments of disquiet: Ed Harris' beady-eyed stare when he greets her with the keys to her apartment. Rotten fruit in the bowl on the table. A gnarly black bug on the pillow of her bed. A pine cone falling from a tree on the beach path that leaves a welt on her back.

Her solitary, idyllic beach time is short-lived, broken by the arrival of an extended family, some all the way from Queens, others who reside on the island, Their noisy obnoxiousness disrupts her tranquility. They're like a Mafia family vacation, bringing out Leda's prickly, easily annoyed side.

Watching her surroundings like a voyeur, she takes particular interest in a spectacularly sexy mother named Nina (Dakota Johnson) and her young daughter. When the little girl goes missing it sends the whole beach into panic mode until Leda finds the youngster innocently playing nearby. 

But observing the mother-daughter drama triggers flashbacks for Leda to her own daughters and her younger self (played by Jessie Buckley, doing most of the heavy lifting in developing the character.) It also triggers some, uh, antisocial behavior on Leda's part that will leave audiences wondering what we're dealing with here, for the rest of the movie.

As a director, Gyllenhaal favors going in close, filling the screen with pieces of faces that accentuate both intimacy and vulnerability. The effect is discomforting, and adds to the inconvenient truth at the heart of the story: motherhood isn't a one-size-fits-all proposition. Some women aren't perfectly suited for it, especially if they're self-centered and their talents and sense of fulfillment lie elsewhere.

The theme was played for laughs in the raunchy comedy “Bad Moms.” It's anything but a laughing matter here. Gyllenhaal, like novelist Ferrante, gets points for painful honestly, letting the emotional chips fall where they may. The film leaves a queasy sensation that some viewers won't recognize at all, but others will find all too familiar.

                            Oscar Isaac in “The Card Counter.” Focus Features image via IMDB

Speaking of chips falling where they may, audiences who prefer a more testosterone-flavored sort of depression might find a winning hand in “The Card Counter.” 

Poker-faced Oscar Isaac plays a brooding William Tell (no kidding, that's his name) in this drama of moral reckoning written and directed by Paul Schrader. Schrader, part of the wave of directors who came into their own in the '70s, made his mark with “Taxi Driver.” His crony from those days Martin Scorsese is along as executive producer of “The Card Counter.” While Scorsese obviously expanded his repertoire over the ensuing decades, Schrader is still basically playing the same tune.

William didn't think he was the kind of guy who would do well in prison, he tells us in the voice-over under the opening scenes. He happens to be in prison in those scenes. Prison was where he acquired several useful habits. He learned to read books. He learned to count cards.

But now he's out, making a relatively good living for himself as a professional gambler. He shares the secrets of card counting and strategies for poker, roulette and other games of chance, also through voice-over. Apparently Shrader missed the film-school class about showing rather than telling when it comes to constructing a good narrative. 

William's routine is chancy but also repetitive, each day like the day before in the green and brown décor under the artificial lighting of the casinos he frequents. “It passes the time,” he says, it keeps the nightmares to a minimum. 

While he purposely keeps a low profile – the casinos don't mind card counters as long as they keep their winnings small – this all changes when he joins forces with La Linda (Tiffany Haddish), who bankrolls gamblers and takes a cut. He has become a man on a mission, trying to save a wayward young man (Tye Sheridan) he feels a bond with, in hopes of redemption for his own past mistakes. Not to give anything away, but those mistakes involve a guy named Gordo (Willem Dafoe).

Paul Schrader is more a word guy than a visual artist. He grew up in a fundamentalist family that kept him away from movies until he was in his teens, and he's been making up lost ground ever since. His signature seems to be lonely, alienated men whose inner voices write poetry, but whose volatile actions speak louder than their words.

Isaac –  laconic, compelling, never cracking a smile through the whole film – carries on the quixotic but almost biblical mission of men forced to take on the wrongs of their society in order to fight their own personal demons. 

“The Card Counter” also includes one of the most violent movie scenes in recent memory – all the more remarkable since the action takes place out of view, as the camera keeps its gaze fixed passively on the furniture in an empty living room.

The scene may provide closure for William Tell, but doesn't offer much cheer in a holiday season in need of all the comfort and joy it can find.