The Daughter

As any kind of introduction to Ibsen, this film is more a turnoff than a turn-on.

Made with taste, skill and discretion, "The Daughter" demonstrates both the staying power of classic material and the risks inherent in bringing it up to date.

While the acting draws us into the story, it plays like a daytime soap opera with really good actors and Australian accents.

The Daughter offers a good but sadly wasted cast, obscured in the eye-rubbing mist of a foggy Down Under countryside and struggling to rise above the sludge of a basic soap opera with literary pretensions.

The off-kilter handheld camerawork frequently chases after the figures as they move about. But there is no disguising that there's much more talk than action in The Daughter.

The characters don't have conversations so much as helpfully recite their back stories, and the long-buried secret is soon so obvious that the movie's last-act hysteria feels forced and a little ridiculous.

Beautifully shot on rural Australia, capturing both the wild beauty of the countryside and the desolation of the failing economy, the film betrays no evidence of its stage origins...

The Daughter is a hauntingly beautiful portrait of two families torn apart by the secrets which connect them.

The top-notch ensemble cast elevates an uneven but stylish adaptation that provides some haunting if improbable twists.

A contrived, undercooked and overstuffed drama that can't be saved by its convincingly moving performances.

In the hands of a director who knew less about how to stage dialog this would have been a bit talky and feel like a lot of soap opera melodrama. Stone takes what could have been taken as exaggeration and leaves it with a realistic feel.

An unflinching look at the incredible harm that can be done by secrets, adultery, and even honesty.