The Australian movie The Daughter is like a wedding present, something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. Based on Henrik Ibsen’s play, The Wild Duck, it tells a story both familiar and unfamiliar through a cast of well known actors including Sam Neill, Geoffrey Rush,  Miranda Otto and Anna Torv followed by  Paul Schneider and Odessa Young as Hedvig : the daughter.

We first glimpse the setting. An almost pristine alpine country town facing an existential crisis : the loss of its main industry. We drawn to the isolation of the location and through that the growing uncertainty of its characters. Similar to the film Somersault, scenes show nature’s expanse and then focus upon the tenuous and fearful mini worlds created and inhabited by the daughter in the film.

The film centres upon a man who returns to his family. After many years he is a stranger to his father and the now dying town. However, he reconnects and rekindles an old friendship. In the midst of that renewal, he discovers a secret  which could imperil that friendship, his relationship with his father and his father’s impending marriage. Unfortunately, that discovery occurs in the middle of his own personal tragedy. In the midst of that tragedy, the man chooses to reveal the secret. For me, it evoked the following choice : if destruction is visited upon you, should you continue it in others even in the name of truth?

But once that secret is known, there is a desperate race to hide that secret. But it is revealed with tragic consequences. Once the crisis is met, the raw emotion of acting is spell binding. But the ending left no one in the audience’s satisfied. Setting aside that, this is a beautiful, evocative and emotional film.