4 stars (out of 5)
The first feature adapted for the screen and directed by the theatre-intensive Simon Stone, this is ambitiously drawn from Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s awfully grim and often-filmed 1884 play The Wild Duck. But please don’t let that put you off, as it’s been updated to contemporary rural Australia and given great heart by a beautifully true-blue cast.
We open in an unnamed town in country NSW (apparently) as Henry (Geoffrey Rush), the owner of the local timber mill, reluctantly and controversially announces his intention to close the longtime family business, an act which will effectively destroy the community. Employee Oliver (Stone’s pal Ewen Leslie) is concerned about getting another job, yet he, his wife Charlotte (Miranda Otto) and his Dad Walter (Sam Neill) are playing down their fears, so as not to upset Oliver and Charlotte’s teenage daughter Hedvig (Odessa Young from Looking For Grace, and with the character keeping her name from the original play).
Just about everyone is also preparing for the impending wedding of Henry and the considerably younger Anna (Anna Torv from TV’s Fringe), and for this grand event, Henry’s long-alienated son Christian (Paul Schneider) is being flown in from New York. He and old friend Oliver immediately restart their blokey habits, but Christian is a serious mess of a man, and this rich brew of secrets, resentments, bad blood and reopened wounds soon becomes heady indeed.
There’s perhaps rather a lot going on here and yet Stone’s handling is assured and impressive, and the performances are exquisite, with particularly strong work from Rush, Leslie, Schneider (memorable as Ryan Gosling’s spiky brother in Lars And The Real Girl) and a punky-haired Young, whose sexually curious, emotionally torn Hedvig dominates the film (it is called The Daughter, after all).
And who could have guessed that families could be so complicated, mate?
I Wake Up Screening 