The Hall sisters and their Netflix directorial debut novella adaptations

You can find coincidences wherever you want in the cinematic landscape -- my blog documents as many of them as I myself can find -- but I thought this one was pretty funny even by those standards.

In listening to my year-end movie podcasts, I've heard a lot of praise for two directorial debuts by actresses. I saw Passing about three weeks ago, and The Lost Daughter Tuesday night.

They are the debuts of Rebecca Hall and Maggie Gyllenhaal, respectively, and though they are obviously not sisters, the similarities between their last names did not go unnoticed by me.

That's not the end of the similarities though. 

Let's list them all, even the ones we have already alluded to:

Both are actresses.

Both are making their feature directorial debut.

Both are also the writer of the film they're directing.

Both also adapted the script from a previously existing work.

In both instances, that previously existing work was a novella.

In both novellas, mothers struggle with the terrible burden and sacrifices of motherhood. 

Both adaptations were distributed by, and can be streamed on, Netflix.

And here's a funny inversion:

Hall was born in England but her movie is about Americans. Gyllenhaal was born in America but her film is about the British. (Well, the lead is British, though the film features Americans, Greek, Irish, and all sorts of others who find themselves on holiday in Greece.)

I had hoped the two actresses turned directors were born in the same year, but alas, Gyllenhaal has got five years on Hall.

The other thing the two films have in common is that they are good. Really good. I've read Nella Larsen's Passing so I can attest to the success of Hall's adaptation of that material. I haven't read Elena Ferrante's The Lost Daughter, so I can only attest to the film being successful in its own right.

A little bit bothered by the term "novella" -- it suggests something slight -- I googled to confirm that both works of literature are actually described correctly as such. It looks like the term is used a little less frequently than "novel," which is good, as I prefer the heartier "novel" in most cases -- length be damned.

For the purposes of this coincidence, though, I'm going with "novella."

I mean, the coincidentier the better.