For all this progress, modern cinema still struggles with representation of stepfathers versus stepmothers . Stepdads are usually portrayed as bumbling but benign (think Mark Ruffalo in Infinitely Polar Bear , 2014). Stepmothers, even today, face a harsher lens. The Lost Daughter (2021) flirts with this—the protagonist’s cool, intellectual distance from her own children invites comparisons to the “cold stepmother” archetype, though the film smartly refuses to resolve her into villainy.