Review: His Three Daughters

Director:  Azazel Jacobs

Stars:  Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen

Three adult women – sisters – convene at the New York apartment where their sick father is convalescing, in preparation for his inevitable death. Over the long and arduous hours their clashing personalities create drama and reveal facets of their entwined histories.

Katie (Carrie Coon) is ‘the mean mother’, a motormouth control freak, fixated on obtaining a DNR since hearing nightmare stories about inelegant deaths. Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) has been living with their father in the apartment for years on end and is quietly, desperately disassociating from the situation in a fug of marijuana smoke. Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) is left to act as mediator between these two extremes; a thankless position that doesn’t allow her the breathing room for her own self-expression. Welcome to Azazel Jacobs’ sensitive exploration of the varying ways we deal with the (impending) death of a loved one.

I found it a mild surprise to learn that His Three Daughters was written for the screen as it has the contained feel of a play transposed. Action is limited to either within the apartment or directly outside it whenever Katie orders Rachel to smoke her joints in the freezing cold. It’s also heavily suggested in the dialogue, which is rich but unnatural; overwritten and prone to arch and lengthy soliloquies.

As unrealistic as the film’s verbose passages make it feel, Jacobs has corralled the best of the best to handle it. Coon is among America’s finest, stalwart performers and channels some of her outstanding work as Nora Durst in The Leftovers for Katie’s knots of pain and resentment. Lyonne – also a natural treasure – hunkers down into Rachel. Indeed, we understand more about her whenever she’s exiled in silence. Jacobs allows just enough breathing room – literally – and Lyonne quietly utilises it. Olsen, meanwhile, selflessly reminds why she seemed like such a powerhouse before the Marvel machine got a hold of her.

Katie’s war of passive aggressive behaviour is as oppressive as the situation, finally – and thankfully – called out by Rachel’s visiting friend Benjy (fellow The Leftovers alum Jovan Adepo). This incident manifests a lengthy discussion between the fractured siblings where the film starts some needful evolutions. Jacobs defers to the work of these actors, framing simply and cleanly, cutting to faces, letting the performers’ work speak for itself. Soon the relationships are naturally mutating.

Questions of ownership recur throughout. Of the apartment. Of food. Of the man in the next room. His Three Daughters is a sinuous enquiry into ownership. How it can be utilised to control, belittle and undermine. But also how it connects us together. The difference between “our father” and “my father” is always important. Jacobs seems as interested in the minutiae of how we use language as he is in the situation and its tendril emotions.

The low (literal) pulse of the breathing apparatus in the next room maintains a tension that carries us through the shapeshifting dynamics and helps Jacobs nail the awkward, messy entropy of the situation. It’s a sensitive portrayal of an all-too-familiar, terrible time that many or most of us will experience in some form or another. A long-standing taboo that cinema allows us to approach with safety, here providing us fine performances to admire so as to soften the blow.

The final act contains a swerve that smacks a little of second-guessed desperation. One sort of senses Jacobs hesitant at the word processor over whether to commit to it or not. Again, it’s the players that power us through. And still, whether it fully works or not, His Three Daughters remains an erudite contemplation on something we often dare not contemplate.