Written and directed by Simon Stone, The Daughter is inspired by The Wild Ducks, a 19th century play written by Henrik Ibsen. In keeping with its mood, this Australian film is almost uniformly dark and grim.
Premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and scheduled to open in Canadian theaters on July 1, it unfolds in the state of New South Wales amid an economic crisis.
Henry Nielsen (Geoffrey Rush), the president of a family-owned lumber mill, announces its imminent closure. The workers are upset. “It’s never too late to start again,” he says, disclosing they will receive severance packages and urging them to move on.
Shortly after this disaster has struck the non-descript town, Nielsen’s long-estranged son, Christian (Paul Schneider), long a resident of the United States, arrives for his father’s wedding.
Nielsen’s 31-year-old bride, Anna, used to be his housekeeper. Christian, still mourning the suicide death of his mother, quietly resents Anna. Nor, as an explosive scene indicates, has he forgiven his father for his mother’s suicide.
As Christian rediscovers the town he once knew, he bumps into his old friend, Oliver (Ewen Leslie), who was laid off when the mill closed. Oliver seems happily married to Charlotte (Miranda Otto), a history teacher. And he’s extremely close to his beloved teenage daughter, Hedwig (Odessa Young).
Eventually, Christian stumbles upon unsavoury secrets that relate to Nielsen, Charlotte and Oliver’s father (Sam Neil). As these secrets pour out, friendships and relationships shatter in a cacophony of anger, betrayal and a touch of violence.
The Daughter, though competently crafted and permeated with fine understated performances, is suffocatingly gloomy.