Azazel Jacobs makes small, intimate dramas tinged with prickly humor. Films such as Terri, The Lovers, and French Exit show his skill at navigating tough, complex relationships with a dark comedic edge. Those gifts are more potent than ever in His Three Daughters, and they have to be because the subject is death, and the emotions of those coping with it are confined within the walls of a tiny Manhattan apartment.
Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen star in His Three Daughters as siblings returned home to care for their father (Jay O. Sanders) in his dying days. Rachel (Lyonne) has been sharing the apartment with Dad, living the life of a stoner and slacker who makes money through sports betting rather than an actual job. That lifestyle rubs her tightly-wound sister Katie (Coon) the wrong way, and she never stops talking about it. Christina (Olsen) is the optimistic one, the referee when Katie and Rachel start going at it, as they always do. A new mom, Christina eagerly wants to return home to her other family.
Those familiar with palliative care will quickly grasp the dull rhythms, the watching, the waiting, the fear that it might be over soon, the gratefulness when it isn’t. The sisters don’t hold up well through such an emotional roller coaster. All they do is fight. Old resentments bubble to the surface as new ones are created. An odd sort of hierarchy emerges within the apartment as Katie and Christina take over the handling of Dad’s affairs, leaving Rachel out of it. As their half-sister, Rachel already feels like an outsider in her own family, and this just makes things worse. Katie obsesses over the details, like a Do Not Resuscitate form that needs signing, and theorizes that the in-home nurses are actually angels of death. She’d rather do that than concern herself with the emotional state of her sisters, who are quietly coming apart at the seams.
Jacobs shifts the dynamic frequently, but can’t avoid picking sides. Coon, Olsen, and Lyonne are all amazing actresses and having them together in one movie is a real treat. But they’re almost too good at what they do, because we find ourselves picking favorites, too. Rachel, whose boyfriend (Jovan Adepo) drops a truth bomb in her defense, earns our sympathy because her frank, “no bullshit” attitude is exactly what the situation calls for, not Katie’s histrionics or Christina’s “let’s all just get along” Zen nonsense.
Unfolding like a single-location stageplay, His Three Daughters makes a character out of the claustrophobic living quarters. You’ll get to understand the layout well, its every corner, the dishes piling up in the kitchen, Dad’s chair looming large in the living room. Watching and waiting as a loved one dies is an oppressive thing. Time moves slowly, like you’re trapped in an hourglass. Things need to be done, but surely nothing is more important than what’s going on in the room where the dying is happening. Jacobs never takes us into that room, and for good reason. What’s happening in there is best reflected by what’s happening outside. For a long time it doesn’t look as if there’s a pathway to reconciliation, but Jacobs finds understanding between the sisters unexpectedly in a moment of catharsis that stretches into the realm of fantasy. And while it offers a happy ending that is too tidy for a film with such thorny familial ties, His Three Daughters is a deeply human and rewarding examination of those bonds and how they persist even after one is gone.
His Three Daughters streams to Netflix on September 20th.
