NOMINATED: Best Film, Stockholm Film Festival
Best Film, Sydney Film Festival
“Deeply involving and emotionally searing, The Daughter represents a confident and profoundly moving
big-screen debut” - Variety
The Daughter, inspired by Stone’s dramatically rewritten stage adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild
Duck, is a moody, brooding drama tinted in alternately warm and blueish hues, as if the film’s aesthetic
rises from the mist of its wintry rural New South Wales setting. A complex score from composer Mark
Bradshaw, heavy on cellos, piano and reverberating chords, complements the lens of cinematographer Andrew
Commis with a gorgeously haunting soundtrack.
The story concerns two families whose skeletons are hauled out of the closet with the arrival of Christian
(Paul Schneider), an on/off the wagon alcoholic returning for the marriage of his father Henry
(Geoffrey Rush) to a decades-younger woman. Christian bumps into old pal Oliver (Ewen Leslie) and spends
time with his family, wife Charlotte (Miranda Ottto), daughter Hedvig (Odessa Young) and father/grandpa
Walter (Sam Neil), encouraging one of them to spill the beans on a long-buried secret.
There are note-perfect performances from the pedigreed cast and Stone spreads the love so that nobody and
everybody steals the show.
Luke Buckmaster
The Guardian
With Special Guest Simon Stone
