His Three Daughters (2023)
November 17, 2024 12:57 AM - Subscribe
This tense, touching and funny portrait of family dynamics follows three estranged sisters as they converge in a New York apartment to care for their ailing father and try to mend their own broken relationship with one another.
From writer-director Azazel Jacobs (French Exit, The Lovers) comes this bittersweet and often funny story of an elderly patriarch and the three grown daughters who come to be with him in his final days. Katie (Carrie Coon) is a controlling Brooklyn mother dealing with a wayward teenage daughter; free-spirited Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) is a different kind of mom, separated from her offspring for the first time; and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) is a sports-betting stoner who has never left her father's apartment -- much to the chagrin of her stepsisters, who share a different mother and worldview. Continuing his astute exploration of family dynamics in close-knit spaces, Jacobs follows the siblings over the course of three volatile days, as death looms, grievances erupt, and love seeps through the cracks of a fractured home.
Wenlei Ma: The back-and-forth play between the three characters in this emotionally heightened moment in their lives is like a world-class tennis match. They’re not intentionally trying to hurt each other but they do, as their own pain manifests and they lash out.
There are so many resentments that trickle and flood over the course of the days trapped in this small space, the precision of these performances from Coon, Lyonne and Olsen taps into the deep history of what connects their characters.
Jacobs, who also wrote the screenplay, masterfully allows his characters to reveal themselves piece by piece, even though from the first jump, we have a strong grasp of their interior lives.
His Three Daughters is a performance piece, giving room to three talented actors to show you exactly what they can do — and they are enthralling.
It’s the kind of film that affirms that thorniness doesn’t have to be the one defining factor of uneasy family relationships, that there is redemption in them too.
Tina Kakadelis:
Familial obligation is what got them there, but it’s their choice if they’ll continue to be in each other’s lives when the connective tissue that is their father passes away. It is a fascinating transformation from each of these women, who had vastly different childhoods. At the beginning, they talk to one another like strangers. Even the supposed closest ones can’t muster anything more meaningful than pleasantries that would be shared with a coworker or acquaintance. His Three Daughters is compelling in its examination of how these people became strangers to one another and how they decide if they want to be sisters in more than just name and blood.
“Thank you for doing better than me. For doing more.” It’s one of Vinny’s only lines in the film. Most of the time he’s nothing more than the sounds of his heartbeat on a bedside monitor behind a closed door. Finally, as His Three Daughters comes to a close, the audience gets to see the man who brought the women together. Two of them are now parents and are understanding their father’s role in a new light. They’re repeating the same mistakes their own parents made. His Three Daughters is messy in a way that reflects all of our families. The way we fight, the way we grieve, and, hopefully, the way we love.
Alex Wheeler: His Three Daughters is an imperfect film filled with perfect moments. You may dislike its performative stiffness, but this gets at the unreality of the experience. You may feel restless within the confines of the New York apartment the daughters are stuck in, but it captures the situation’s inescapability. And you’ll probably want all three girls to just say what desperately needs said, but we all live with unspoken truths.
From these formal rigidities come moments that ache with intimate reality. When Natasha Lyonne’s Rachel breaks down thinking about her father and calls him ‘daddy’, she slips into pure emotional memory. The word brings her back to childhood and makes the man dying in the other room into the person she relies on with pure trust. In their real relationship, such rose-colored glasses have been off for a long time. Lyonne is playing a very Natasha Lyonne character: a brash, BSing New Yorker who isn’t going to be pushed around by anyone. Except by her sisters. Except by loss. Except by everything in that apartment that’s making her cling to the man she once believed could take care of everything.
Intimate moments like that abound in His Three Daughters because it captures how all three girls revert to their family roles. They become children again. Their mothers are long gone, and once their father is gone, will they ever be children again? Will they ever fall into the familiar unpleasantness of these roles with each other at their sides?
Trailer
From writer-director Azazel Jacobs (French Exit, The Lovers) comes this bittersweet and often funny story of an elderly patriarch and the three grown daughters who come to be with him in his final days. Katie (Carrie Coon) is a controlling Brooklyn mother dealing with a wayward teenage daughter; free-spirited Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) is a different kind of mom, separated from her offspring for the first time; and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) is a sports-betting stoner who has never left her father's apartment -- much to the chagrin of her stepsisters, who share a different mother and worldview. Continuing his astute exploration of family dynamics in close-knit spaces, Jacobs follows the siblings over the course of three volatile days, as death looms, grievances erupt, and love seeps through the cracks of a fractured home.
Wenlei Ma: The back-and-forth play between the three characters in this emotionally heightened moment in their lives is like a world-class tennis match. They’re not intentionally trying to hurt each other but they do, as their own pain manifests and they lash out.
There are so many resentments that trickle and flood over the course of the days trapped in this small space, the precision of these performances from Coon, Lyonne and Olsen taps into the deep history of what connects their characters.
Jacobs, who also wrote the screenplay, masterfully allows his characters to reveal themselves piece by piece, even though from the first jump, we have a strong grasp of their interior lives.
His Three Daughters is a performance piece, giving room to three talented actors to show you exactly what they can do — and they are enthralling.
It’s the kind of film that affirms that thorniness doesn’t have to be the one defining factor of uneasy family relationships, that there is redemption in them too.
Tina Kakadelis:
Familial obligation is what got them there, but it’s their choice if they’ll continue to be in each other’s lives when the connective tissue that is their father passes away. It is a fascinating transformation from each of these women, who had vastly different childhoods. At the beginning, they talk to one another like strangers. Even the supposed closest ones can’t muster anything more meaningful than pleasantries that would be shared with a coworker or acquaintance. His Three Daughters is compelling in its examination of how these people became strangers to one another and how they decide if they want to be sisters in more than just name and blood.
“Thank you for doing better than me. For doing more.” It’s one of Vinny’s only lines in the film. Most of the time he’s nothing more than the sounds of his heartbeat on a bedside monitor behind a closed door. Finally, as His Three Daughters comes to a close, the audience gets to see the man who brought the women together. Two of them are now parents and are understanding their father’s role in a new light. They’re repeating the same mistakes their own parents made. His Three Daughters is messy in a way that reflects all of our families. The way we fight, the way we grieve, and, hopefully, the way we love.
Alex Wheeler: His Three Daughters is an imperfect film filled with perfect moments. You may dislike its performative stiffness, but this gets at the unreality of the experience. You may feel restless within the confines of the New York apartment the daughters are stuck in, but it captures the situation’s inescapability. And you’ll probably want all three girls to just say what desperately needs said, but we all live with unspoken truths.
From these formal rigidities come moments that ache with intimate reality. When Natasha Lyonne’s Rachel breaks down thinking about her father and calls him ‘daddy’, she slips into pure emotional memory. The word brings her back to childhood and makes the man dying in the other room into the person she relies on with pure trust. In their real relationship, such rose-colored glasses have been off for a long time. Lyonne is playing a very Natasha Lyonne character: a brash, BSing New Yorker who isn’t going to be pushed around by anyone. Except by her sisters. Except by loss. Except by everything in that apartment that’s making her cling to the man she once believed could take care of everything.
Intimate moments like that abound in His Three Daughters because it captures how all three girls revert to their family roles. They become children again. Their mothers are long gone, and once their father is gone, will they ever be children again? Will they ever fall into the familiar unpleasantness of these roles with each other at their sides?
Trailer
The ending didn’t sit well with, either. It didn’t ruin the movie for me (I still highly recommend it!) but it felt like a sudden left turn. Super strong performances all around, though. I was happy I stumbled across it on Netflix.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:09 AM on November 19, 2024
posted by Thorzdad at 4:09 AM on November 19, 2024
Thinking about it, I felt like the father was chatting with them through each other. In part the point of the movie is how this invisible presence shaped them, and they were conversing with their own memories of him through their conversations. I didn't need it spelled out really.
posted by Carillon at 3:12 PM on November 19, 2024
posted by Carillon at 3:12 PM on November 19, 2024
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posted by Carillon at 12:58 AM on November 17, 2024