2015 Directed by Simon Stone
In the last days of a dying logging town, Christian returns to his family home for his father Henry’s wedding. While home, Christian reconnects with his childhood friend Oliver, who has stayed in town working at Henry’s timber mill and is now out of a job. As Christian gets to know Oliver’s wife Charlotte, daughter Hedvig, and father Walter, he discovers a secret that could tear Oliver’s family apart.
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LOL at the man who made sure that when this ended, that all of us in the cinema with him knew he hated it.
I hated this film. Simon Stone's The Daughter is a disjointed collage of dramatic one-liners, with characters so lacking in nuance they come across less like humans and more like two dimensional mouthpieces for vague tragic whimsy. Each line in this film is so isolated and so contextless we're left feeling nothing for the characters who deliver them. Stone is so caught up in one-upping the stakes from one scene to the next he leaves little room for genuine emotion - as if his idea of compelling cinema is simply 'bad things happen.'
“Well it’s not the life I expected when it was nineteen. But I’m lucky.”
— Oliver Finch, The Daughter (2016)
This is one amazing Australian drama. It treats every character as a person, every action is rational which allows you to become disappointed and angry at these characters for their actions. The world that has been set up in The Daughter is real, the dynamics are real, their reactions to situations are real, and their inability to see their own flaws is so, so real.
Set around Christian (Paul Schneider) coming back to the mill town for his father's (Henry played by Geoffrey Rush) wedding to his 31 year old fiancé Anna (Anna Torv). He has…
I'm kinda mad because everything about this film is totally up my alley -- overly dramatic and mostly illogical familial affairs, weddings, Australia... but it's so focused on 4 boring men I found it really hard to connect to the story. Had the narrative been more balanced or actually took into account the women's emotions, I could totally see myself loving it. With such a strong troupe of actors and some lovely cinematography, I'm pissed I actually wound up hating this! And why is it called "The Daughter" when she's really only relevant as collateral damage to some decades long boy drama??? I'm tired.
You can't just overdramatize a poor screenplay and expect great actors to make it better.
The Daughter is an Australian drama film written and directed by Simon Stone. It is a reworking of the play The Wild Duck by Henrik Ibsen.
Christian Nielsen, a recovering alcoholic, returns to Australia from the United States for the wedding of his father, Henry, to his much younger housekeeper, Anna. Upon his arrival, he finds out that Charlotte, Henry's former housekeeper and wife of his childhood friend Oliver, had an affair with Henry, and that his teenage daughter, Hedvig, is actually his half sister.
Another devastating news happens when Christian's wife, who was also supposed to attend the wedding, leaves him over the phone, leading Christian to binge drink again. At the wedding, feeling miserable and hating Henry for…
When the Sydney Film Festival program was announced, my wife had a browse through it and picked out this film. I didn't know much about it but I dutifully bought a couple of tickets and accompanied her to the State Theatre to see its world premiere. I am so glad that I did.
This is riveting Australian drama. Without giving too much away, this film is about an affair and the potential fallout that results. When someone has the right to know the brutal truth, to what purpose does revealing it serve. Should you rip asunder the peaceful fabric of everyone's happiness. Or should you maintain the lie in an effort to pragmatically maintain the peace. There is no easy…
Simon Stone is a first-time writer and director (of features, anyway: he did a bit in THE TURNING), and THE DAUGHTER betrays the latter than the former. While the script has a few business issues (some elisions between scenes had me shaking my head), it's largely strong, with classical drama bones (didn't know it was based on an Ibsen play til the closing credits but it doesn't surprise me in the slightest), and a lived-in feel to individual scenes that didn't make them feel overdetermined, even if the central metaphor of the duck is more than a bit heavy-handed (albeit, of course, imported from Ibsen).
Craftwise, it feels a bit like a first film where either the director wants to…
Quite a heavy drama based on a classic play. Been many good film like this from Australia. An atmospheric film full of family secrets and relationship in a small town in beautiful Snowy Mountains Australia
With Geoffrey Rush and Sam Neill (2) veteran actors of Oz cinema you know it’s already going to be a good story.
Odessa Young’s first feature film and she is probably the star of the film being the central character to the whole story
Beautiful cinematography and wonderful performance saves an otherwise lacklustre script.
Miranda Otto is queen of playing unhinged women named Charlotte!
Everyone's got a story like this.
-Walter
Less of a story and more of a series of events designed to get emotional responses from it's characters. You get this outstanding cast giving great performances from a script that is complete schlock.
To predict where the movie is going you just need to wonder what is the most extreme response a character could have to any given situation and that's what's going to happen.
Geoffrey Rush and Sam Neill are still outstanding no matter what though.
