The Daughter (2016)

Review

95min

Genre:       Drama

Director:    Simon Stone

Cast:         Geoffrey Rush, Odessa Young, Miranda Otto…and more

Writers:     Henrik Ibsen and Simon Stone

-Synopsis-

The tranquil lives of an Australian small town group of people are thrown into turmoil when someone’s long anticipated return home dredges up dark family secrets, and a truth which tears unsuspecting families apart in this drama based on Henrik Ibsen’s ‘The Wild Duck’.

Aussie stage & screen actor Simon Stone is no stranger to Norway’s greatest playwright, having won awards for adapting Ibsen’s ‘The Wild Duck’, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that he chose a screen adaptation of this dark family drama about the idealism in the pursuit of truth as his feature film directorial debut.

‘The Daughter’ takes place in rural Australia in the setting of a slowly decaying logging town, giving it a more open canvas than Ibsen’s play; perhaps it’s intentional and perhaps not but the lush woodland  aesthetic and vivid cinematography gives it a European look, but this is a distinctly Antipodean affair with a slight American sprinkle.

Geoffrey Rush stars as the small-town industrialist whose estranged son’s visit from America brings up painful memories and rips out the skeletons from a collective closet, threatening to destroy another close local family in a dark and candid tale of truth and consequence.

While Stone’s adaptation retains the core narrative, it’s a contemporary version of a 19th century work which varies from it, both in the ambiguous and personal conclusion and in terms of the characters involved. No more so than in the case of “The Daughter” herself, played brilliantly by Aussie teenager Odessa Young, who retains the name form the stage-play but not much else.

‘The Daughter’ is every inch the considered slow-build drama with an element of slightly predictable mystery, which may not be to everyone’s liking, but once that mystery is solved in the 3rd Act it descends slightly into soap-opera melodrama territory.

But thanks to solid performances all around and the steady hand and minimalist approach of its novice director; ‘The Daughter’ somehow resists being too melodramatic of a melodrama and presents deeply flawed characters that are easy for an audience to attach themselves to.

This dark relationship drama illuminates dark parts of the male psyche without letting the fairer sex off the hook, and has a candid realist nature in keeping with an adaptation of the theatrical father of “realism” and “modernism”.

The Bottom Line…

A dark, slow-burn family melodrama which never goes over-the-top; ‘The Daughter’ is a gripping and assured feature directorial debut from Simon Stone, one of the more accomplished recent theatrical film adaptations and a story which truly challenges the old assertion that “the truth shall set you free”.

Similar films you may like (Home Video)

Secrets & Lies (1996)

When a black, middle-class adopted young British woman tracks down her biological mother, who happens to be a working-class white woman; the many secrets of a dysfunctional family are exposed in this Oscar-nominated drama from writer/director Mike Leigh.

Directed by Mike Leigh and starring Brenda Blethyn, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Timothy Spall among others.

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