I can’t remember how many times I’ve had to look up Maggie Gyllenhaal’s last name before spelling it, but that won’t stop me from making a couple of beauty-related observations about her extraordinary new movie, The Lost Daughter.
You can read a grouchy analysis of the film here. I want to say something about two of the film’s faces—faces Gyllenhaal’s camera examines, caresses, and bumps up against in a way that often feels disturbingly intimate and intrusive. Inevitably, this line of thinking will lead me to a point about faces that have not been majorly manipulated by aesthetic interventions, which is by now an old story, but still worth a minute.
To you in the back row muttering, “Why must we always talk about women’s aging faces rather than their accomplishments?” I offer up first, the man. Seventy-one-year-old Ed Harris plays a guy who’s spent thirty years in the blazing Greek sun blowing cigarette smoke through his nose—and has the skin to prove it. But is he something or what? (I’m also 71 and am grateful not to have his face, but rather a more…tended one, as we all know our culture is tougher on women than on men about what’s attractive as we age.) He dances like there’s no tomorrow, probably a good idea considering his chances of developing skin or lung cancer. But he is old—and his face, unblemished by youth, tells us he is full of, I don’t know…loneliness? It feels both shocking and refreshing to see a face so ravaged by expression and exposure.
All I want to say about Olivia Colman’s face is: Olivia Colman’s face.
Almost all I want to say. She spends nearly the entire movie with wet hair and the kind of makeup that’s meant to look like no makeup. With the camera two inches from her cheek, she is ravishing—at 47, she’s far from western culture’s aesthetic ideal and, remarkably for an actress, seemingly untouched by intervention. Yet we can’t take our eyes off her. Why? Because her face, too, tells a story, a complicated story, and in the telling elicits a compelling desire in us to know it. What is that desire but attraction?
I think maybe Gyllenhaal, in an unintentional side gig, is beckoning us toward a beauty culture that—instead of fetishizing youth and sexuality—values and evokes, as great art does, presence, compassion, vulnerability, longing, curiosity, even a search for meaning.
I often urge you to learn to look at yourself without objectification. Bottom-line, that exercise allows and encourages you to let your face tell your stories, to recognize and welcome the character you’ve learned to conceal or obscure with a placid, pleasing expression, or with makeup, or with other, more intrusive aesthetic interventions.
Please take up your mirror now. Look into your own eyes. Can you see the story of a life in your own face? Can you find your own ravishing attraction?
Speaking of mirrors, “Ask Val” answers your urgent questions, Vol. 21
Yes, you in the cap and goggles and those fashionable driving gloves?
Q: Why do I always look terrible in car mirrors?
A: If by “terrible” you mean tired and gray, and possibly also depressed, you’ll be glad to know it’s not you. It’s the mirrors.
This is apparently a more complicated question than it might seem, but as I understand it, essentially, most mirrors we use (to either scan our faces for flaws or learn how to, ahem, be kinder to ourselves) are “second surface” mirrors, which reflect less light and are therefore more forgiving than “first surface” car mirrors. First surface mirrors reflect as much as 99% of incoming light (as opposed to only around 80% in second surface), therefore revealing more angles and edge recognition, which can look harsh on a face but is just what you need for flight simulation, a telescope…or a rearview mirror. Also, as you probably know, car side mirrors are convex, distorting anything that drifts into view, including you.
If you’re one of those people, you probably shouldn’t be applying eye makeup in the car anyway. Better to do that in your bathroom, where the lighting will be more flattering and you won’t be distracted by oncoming traffic.
HNTFUYF, A Payola-Free Zone
Readers, a few of you have wondered aloud to me if I get a cut from sales when I mention a product. I do not. I only mention products I’d like to buy myself, and therefore think you might like, too. I share this so you know my recommendations are clean, offered without obligation. The only financial contributions I receive from these posts are from those of you who have generously subscribed. So thank you! If you’ve tried any of the products I’ve recommended, I hope you like them as much as I do. xo
Val Asks You
Don’t be shy! What’s your most vexing or intractable appearance issue? Send your beauty-related questions to valeriemonroe@substack.com. If I don’t have a good answer, I’ll find someone who does.
Val, our mind meld continues apace. Rachel and I devoted a 30 minute sidebar to Olivia Coleman's age (two years older than me) and her face, and to Maggie G's artistry in capturing them. We also loved the older sister character (actress is 45), who Rachel points out is also Carolina on Succession! We also spent several minutes on Dakota Johnson's..hips. My lord. And didn't you LOVE the freckled face of the actress playing young Olivia Coleman, Jessie something or other? SO MUCH TO MARVEL AT IN THIS FILM.
So glad you mentioned Ed Harris's face in Lost Daughter. Plenty of living in that face, and such a relief to see one so unabashedly unaltered.