His Three Daughters, the review of the film on Netflix

At the beginning of the new film by Azazel Jacobs, His Three Daughters (now on Netflix), one worries about what will happen. The words struggle to come out, the camera is close and static. It all seems like a questionable adaptation of a play, rigid and didactic. The stars of the film, Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne And Elizabeth Olsenthey are all welcome screen presences, yet the first impression is that it would have been preferable to see them perform this material on an intimate metropolitan stage.

Soon, however, Jacobs’ film relaxes, begins to breathe at a reassuring rhythm. The reality is still a bit exaggerated – do people really launch into such expository monologues in everyday life? – but that slight artificiality involves rather than alienating. His Three Daughters gradually transforms into one of most exciting dramas of the yeara small e sad family story which concerns a vast universal human experience.

Coon, Lyonne and Olsen play the daughters of a man at the end of his lifewho remains invisible for most of the film, while they wait for him to pass away in his cramped but cozy Manhattan apartment. The daughters are also worried about what is to come, even though they know that it is inevitable and imminent. Coon is Katie, a fragile perfectionist who lives across the river in Brooklyn and hasn’t been around much during her father’s illness. This frustrates his half-sister Rachel (Lyonne), who still lives with their father and has been by his side through every stage of his agonizing decline. Katie judges Rachel’s habits (smoking weed at home, betting on sporting events) and the two seem ready to argue.

Trying to calm things down is her younger sister Christina (Olsen), who lives far away on the West Coast in happy motherhood. She is a former maverick free spirit who has settled into a simpler, more traditional routine; he balances his pseudoscientific beliefs with practice, although something rebellious and hungry still shines in his eyes.

Everything is fine character is dashed with care and precisiongoing beyond the archetype to get to the wonderful and biting details of authentic characterization. It’s one credible familywhose members barely know each other, now struggling to remain united in the face of the same approaching pain. The pleasure of the film is simply watching them negotiate and bicker, revealing new facets of their personal stories as Jacobs calmly watches.

The trio is occasionally interrupted by a palliative care nurse or by Benjy, Rachel’s sort of boyfriend, played with quiet transport by Jovan Adepo. But they still remain at the center, grappling with the meaning of the closing of a great family chapter, without knowing what the next one might be like, if there ever will be one.

Rachel feels the stranger, given the man who is dying, Vincent (Jay O. Sanders), is not her biological father. But in reality she has always experienced him as a father in all respects and is closer to him than her “real” children are. This tension could be exploited for an obvious and mannered drama, Jacobs, on the other hand, tackles the topic head on, however finding some interesting nuances: the audience has the feeling that finally, after years of unexpressed resentment, space is opening up for a conversation in the sunlight. Surprising, painful and cathartic at the same time.

In this scene, and throughout the film, Coon, Lyonne and Olsen are superb, complementing Jacobs’ more formal dialogue with the stutters and tics of everyday speech. The most eye-catching role, if I may say so, is perhaps that of Lyonne, who is the torn heart of the film and tempers her usual irascibility with flashes of tired melancholy. Coon, however, is a convincing woman who masks her insecurities with a tense haughtiness.

On a second viewing, however, I found Olsen’s to be the more touching interpretation. The actress delicately paints a portrait of a person who clings to the soothing but insufficient balm of positive thinking. There are moments when you wonder if she might actually be the saddest of the three, but probably also the wisest. A scene in which Christina explains what it meant to be alternative and against the grain is not just a compelling excavation of one character, but perhaps an entire culture.

In that scene, as in many others, the strength is in the specificity, in the ways Jacobs draws us into understanding this small and particular group of people. We suffer for them as individuals, but also for ourselves, for our fears, our losses and our feelings of helplessness as time gradually takes back everything it has given us.

Jacobs’ film is mostly meager and unadorned. Towards the end, however, he indulges in an imaginative reverie, in which he imagines a final moment of connection and exchange. Jacobs stops halfway, evoking the abrupt end of almost every existence. There are many things we will never know about the people we love. His Three Daughters he insists, with a tired sigh, that having met them will have to be enough.