Venice Review: 'The Daughter' With Geoffrey Rush, Miranda Otto, Paul Schneider, Sam Neill & Newcomer Odessa Young

"I don't ever want to grow up," says a drunken Christian (Paul Schneider) after an evening carousing with childhood best friend Oliver (Ewen Leslie). And you can see how in that maudlin state he might long for the simplicity and security of childhood again. But it's also true that, as Oliver replies flippantly "It's too late"—they have both grown up, into very different men. Simon Stone's "The Daughter" is a sensitive and cinematic exploration of those differences, and a tale of fathers disappointing their sons and sons resenting their fathers, with the titular daughter, Hedvig (excellent newcomer Odessa Young) representing the best chance of breaking that cycle. But for Christian, it is too late—the past has already made him what he is, and now that his present is crumbling (with a wife at home in the States who is leaving him, a drinking problem he is re-embracing and a paternal relationship stressed to breaking point by several revelations surrounding...