Review: His Three Daughters

Three great actresses give three great performances.

His Three Daughters understands, better than almost any movie I’ve seen, the dynamics of sibling relationships and the ways in which we subconsciously fall back into established rhythms among family, with old wounds and histories assigning us our roles. 

Azazel Jacobs’ film concerns three grown women who convene at their father’s apartment to sit vigil while he’s in hospice. When they’re not at his bedside, they’re trying – and often failing – to not indulge old conflicts and navigate a moment that feels at once momentous and banal. 

Katie (Carrie Coon), the eldest, frets about getting a DNR signed, ensuring that the fridge is stocked, and tossing passive aggressive comments at Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), the middle child who lives at – and stands to inherit – the apartment, yet keeps herself at arm’s length, sneaking out to smoke pot on a bench and hang out with her friend. The youngest, Christina (Elizabeth Olsen), tries to keep the peace and focus conversations on her young daughter, yet her frequent mediation and yoga sessions hint at just how much stress roils beneath the surface. The film spends most of its time in the apartment’s living room or kitchen; we never venture past the threshold of the father’s room, but the beeping from his monitor is a constant reminder that there’s a deadline to these estranged siblings’ time together. 

The film is a touching, funny and perceptive glimpse at family colliding into each other during one of its most important moments. But while the subjects of mortality and grief bleed in occasionally, the film is most concerned about family dynamics, and how the relationship between these sisters is shaped by their own histories and factors sometimes beyond their control. 

Jacobs’ script is one of the year’s best, its dialogue doling out information about these sisters as we need it. Through phone calls, we learn that Katie’s control freak tendencies might also be causing tension with her teenage daughter, while similar calls home show the love and attention Christina lavishes on her daughter and prompt us to ask whether she’s compensating for something she feels she didn’t get growing up. We learn that one sibling only visits occasionally, despite living not too far away, and that two of the daughters share a mother while Rachel’s status as a step sister might be the reason she’s held at arm’s length from Katie. Occasionally, there will be a moment that causes two or more of the sisters to erupt at each other, but there are also opportunities for tentative healing and understanding, as the sisters confront the fact that they each have their own separate lives and ponder what will tether them together when the beeping in the next room stops. 

I was surprised to find that His Three Daughters is not based on a play. That’s not just because of its single-location setting, but because Jacobs structures the film around several monologues or sequences of the characters talking at each other. At times, it risks being overwritten and performative, but I think that’s also the point. There are unwritten roles we play when we return to our families, and no matter how we might be in our everyday life, we have a tendency to slip right back into those old dynamics when we return to those old environments. When we’re in close quarters during important moments – births, deaths, giving care – we often search for what our contribution is, and we cling to it even as it draws us into our old, petty disputes and tensions. 

The ensemble is fantastic. Coon’s Katie is initially unlikable and prickly, but it’s easy to see that her type A personality is a function of the oldest who, even though she’s made herself more distant from her family, feels she must insert herself and her authority and lead the decision-making, even if it alienates the others. But it’s also a cover for a loss of control here and, possibly, at home. Olsen gives a great performance as Christina, the flighty younger child who’s started her own life thousands of miles away and found joy in creating her own family but who finds her inner peace starting to fray when brought back into these old rhythms. Lyonne, who of late continues to deliver great performances, gives one of her best as Rachel, the black sheep who keeps herself at a distance even though she’s been the closest to their father and the one taking care of him during his illness. Lyonne is feisty and funny, but there’s a sorrow at the center of her performance that I don’t know we’ve seen from her before. All three performances deserve recognition at awards time, but hers might be the most memorable. 

I’m blessed enough that, at 45, my parents are still healthy and active. But I’ve seen how they and their siblings have had to gather around parents in their final months. I’ve watched how that’s drawn them closer, but also how old fractures have become more pronounced during moments of stress. At times, this only compounds the heartache of an already difficult situation; at other times, it brings siblings closer and opens the doors to healing. Sometimes, it’s a mixture of hurt and healing at the same time. Jacobs never forces a conflict or catharsis, but rather sits in the tension, allowing sorrow and tenderness to mingle. 

The action is largely confined to the apartment. And while that setting is sometimes intentionally claustrophobic, the film never feels overly stage bound. Jacobs keeps the camera moving and finds new ways to frame the action, peering around walls and floating down hallways. Occasionally, a hospice worker or a family friend will come in – there’s a fantastic monologue from Jovan Adepo as Rachel’s friend who is the only one unafraid to stand up to her sisters – but largely the film remains focused on the three siblings. Early in the film, he shoots them largely in single shots but, as the film continues, he includes two or three in the frame, showcasing the way their time together is making the walls between them a little more flexible. 

The film culminates in a sequence that might split some people. Initially, I thought it was a saccharine departure for a film that had largely kept its feet grounded in reality and avoided sentimentality. But as the scene played out and I began to realize what was happening – linked to a monologue given by Olsen just minutes earlier – I realized what Jacobs was attempting and that, if it hit, it would hurt. And it does. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a film capture so well the desire for catharsis and closure that children hope for in their final moments parents and how illness and death rob us of that. For anyone who’s recently suffered loss, it’s going to hit like a sledgehammer. 

I’m sure His Three Daughters risks being buried on Netflix at the mercy of an algorithm. It’s not overly flashy or dramatic. But it’s one of the year’s best written and best acted films. It’s a quiet heartbreaker of a movie, and one that shouldn’t be ignored.