Director Azazel Jacobs pulls a nifty trick in the opening scene of His Three Daughters. We open cold on a single shot of Carrie Coon, delivering a stern and lengthy monologue, her back against the wall. We then cut to the recipient of the diatribe, Natasha Lyonne, rolling her eyes slumped silently in a chair; Coon seems to be towering over her. We then cut to a third woman, Elizabeth Olsen, sitting directly at eye level as she calmly tries to find common ground between the other two, who we learn are her sisters. It’s a classic technique of staging: by staging the three actresses at different planes, Jacobs communicates their levels of power in relation to each other.
Only that’s not what’s happening. After Olsen says her piece– several minutes into the film, as these characters can talk– we get our first look at the three of them in a single shot… and realize they’ve been at the same level this entire time. This is not presented as a reveal, and indeed, casual viewers probably won’t even notice, but it’s a handy demonstration of what makes the film so effective. His Three Daughters is an incredibly wordy film in the way that adaptations of stage plays often are, but it was written for the screen, and Jacobs subtly uses the medium to convey things that would have been impossible on the stage. It’s a sneakily effective little film, and you’ll likely find yourself more wrapped up in it than you initially realize.
As stated, the three women are sisters, reunited after some time apart to tend after their father, Vincent, as he nears the end of his time on his deathbed. Rachel (Lyonne) is the eldest, but one would be excused for mistaking her for the youngest; she still lives with Vincent in their rent-controlled Manhattan apartment, smoking weed and betting on sports games. Uptight Katie (Coon), who lives across the river in Brooklyn, swoops in to take control of the situation, apoplectic that Rachel never got Vincent to sign his DNR form while he still had his wits about him. Christine (Olsen), the youngest, is a semi-reformed deadhead whose suburban life, half a country away from her sisters, revolves entirely around her three-year-old daughter.
The central pleasure of His Three Daughters is watching these three eminently watchable actresses share a stage. The effect is a little like watching a supergroup of established guitar heroes, each with their own signature style. Coon is imperious and cutting, each monologue an intricately written tour de force. Lyonne plays a variation on her signature character– wry, sarcastic, raspy-voiced– but with more notes of melancholy than she’s sometimes given. Best of the lot is perhaps Olsen, finally freed from her contract to comic-book purgatory; she has to spend the entire movie playing two levels at once, the veneer of perfect-mom and peacemaker stretched over wells of sadness and resentment. Like a power trio, each of these virtuosos is given ample room to solo (again, this is very much a movie of monologues), but the real magic is when they jam together, locking into each other’s rhythms in often surprising ways.
But this is not some empty actors’ showcase; the emotions on display here are real, and they are deeply felt. We know, of course, how this story is going to end; there is no version of His Three Daughters in which Vincent leaps out of bed and starts dancing like Grandpa Buckett in Willy Wonka (though there is one improbably effective sequence in which Jacobs very nearly convinces us he might). The three women know it, too, and the journey of the film is in watching them come to terms with this knowledge. Katie fusses endlessly, as if micromanaging her father’s death will bring order to her own life. Christine tries to apply an Insta-friendly brand of mindfulness to turn this experience into something beautiful, even though she’s clearly barely holding it together herself. Rachel, for her part, continues getting high and watching the Giants, which her sisters take as a sign of immaturity, but is more likely a manifestation of an even rawer grief– after all, she’s been Vincent’s roomie and drinking buddy all these years. The tension between the characters, and especially the little moments, feel so real and honest that one can hardly help worrying about Jacobs’ own father, the legendary 91-year-old underground filmmaker Ken Jacobs. I hope he’s doing OK.
I have mentioned it a few times already, but His Three Daughters is an incredibly wordy film, and as such will be something of an acquired taste; I’d wager a majority of the dialogue could more properly be classified as monologue. But despite the torrents of verbiage, Jacobs is adept at communicating information through what isn’t said. We receive dribs of exposition via Katie’s discarded obituary drafts, but mostly we learn the contours of the sisters’ relationships via their interactions. Then there are the little moments which Jacobs omits, allowing us to fill in the gaps ourselves: a tense phone conversation between Katie and her rebellious teen, followed by Katie calmly picking the smashed pieces of a coffee cup off the floor. Jacobs’ words do a lot of talking, but so do his silences.
It must also be said that hanging out with three oft-abrasive characters who are constantly at each other’s throats won’t be everybody’s idea of a good time (there is one scene in particular, in which Katie harasses Rachel’s Black boyfriend, which makes it considerably harder to sympathize with her for the rest of the film). But the film’s acid wit goes a long way toward preventing His Three Daughters from becoming just another sobfest; indeed, the audience in my screening was laughing at least as much as sniffling. We are only at the beginning of the long and grueling stretch known as Awards Season, and there will likely be bigger and showier films which will overshadow this modest little story, but His Three Daughters boasts one of the best ensembles of the year sinking their teeth into a screenplay worthy of their performances. If nothing else, it may inspire you to call your parents– and maybe even your siblings.
His Three Daughters
2024
dir. Azazel Jacobs
104 min.
Opens Friday, 9/6 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre
Streaming on Netflix starting 9/20
