Cinequest Closing Night’s headliner is the tragic Australian drama The Daughter, which is emotionally powerful and ultimately devastating. Paul Schrader along with a passel of Aussie stars like Geoffrey Rush and Sam Neill portray characters entangled by a family secret that only some of them know. As the secret is revealed to the rest…(well, no spoilers here).
The characters that we first think are the most important recede in favor of seemingly secondary characters. as The Daughter drives toward its climax. As the characters evolve in prominence, our sympathies change, too. The Daughter is adapted from Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck and is so completely modernized that you’d never know that the source material is a century old.
The cast is superb, but the standouts are Anna Torn and Ewen Leslie, whose performances are absolutely heartbreaking. The Daughter is gripping and profoundly moving.