Milan Records releases the soundtrack to the Netflix film The Lost Daughter with music by Dickon Hinchliffe. Alone on a seaside vacation, Leda becomes consumed with a young mother and daughter as she watches them on the beach. Unnerved by their compelling relationship, (and their raucous and menacing extended family), Leda is overwhelmed by her own memories of the terror, confusion and intensity of early motherhood. An impulsive act shocks Leda into the strange and ominous world of her own mind, where she is forced to face the unconventional choices she made as a young mother and their consequences...

Dickon Hinchliffe's music for The Lost Daughter works wonderfully in the movie, but sadly falls a little flat when listened to in isolation.

Talking about the soundtrack, Hinchliffe says, "Scoring The Lost Daughter was a unique creative challenge. Director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s idea was for the music to sound like a ‘found’ record - a vintage piece of vinyl that would become the score for the film. The challenge was to combine this feeling of spontaneity with the complex emotional language of the film and its central character Leda. I wrote a main theme for Leda, and then variations of it that engage with her constantly shifting psychological state. Other themes grew from the flashbacks of her younger self dealing with the emotional pressures of motherhood and her growing unease as these pressures return in the present. We used vintage recording techniques and equipment at Abbey Road Studios to create an analogue sound influenced by film scores, jazz and popular music from the 1950's and '60s."

When the composer says: "...music to sound like a ‘found’ record - a vintage piece of vinyl..." this is exactly what's delivered. The film's main theme sounds like a stripped down version of James Brown's 'This is a Man's World'. Sadly it was really the only memorable theme included.

The album contains 16 tracks (38 min, 18 sec) of atmospheric background cues. I didn't find it particularly engaging or interesting and the main theme seemed a little overused.

5

Darren Rea