Directed By Azazel Jacobs

Starring – Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen

The Plot – Katie (Coon) is a controlling Brooklyn mother dealing with a wayward teenage daughter; free-spirited Christina (Olsen) is a different kind of mom, separated from her offspring for the first time; and Rachel (Lyonne) is a sports-betting stoner who has never left her father’s (Jay O. Sanders) apartment, much to the chagrin of her half-sisters, who share a different mother and worldview. Continuing his astute exploration of family dynamics in close-knit spaces, Jacobs follows the siblings over the course of three volatile days, as death looms, grievances erupt, and love seeps through the cracks of a fractured home.

Rated R for adult language and drug use

His Three Daughters | Official Trailer | Netflix (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

It isn’t often where I get to bask about a Netflix movie being exceptional, but ‘His Three Daughters’ is one of the most raw and emotionally stirring dramas based on family dynamics that I have ever seen, with an honesty about grief that takes the film miles in the depths of these polar opposite women who share one commonality between them. Jacobs masterfully constructs the claustrophobia to this mostly one stage setting, forcing the sisters to confront conflicts among them that has long been bottled up, but even beyond that crafts interactions and dialogue so effortlessly natural with lived-in depth that the audience can coherently interpret, allowing the trio of leading ladies the accessibility to seamlessly disappear into their respective roles. If you’re someone who isn’t too keen on dialogue-driven movies, then this definitely won’t be for you, but I found myself compelled by the tenderness and frailty of each pocketed dynamic, with atmospheric combustible elements sure to blow at even the most subtle quip or dig towards one another, which are designed so backhandedly to not feel forcefully abrasive. Jacobs constantly appraises importance to the interactions, so much so that he keeps the entirety of the film focused on his trio of daughters, instead of showing the ailing father, and while it initially felt distracting to my interpretation, one key sequence during the climax cements clarity to a parent’s irreplaceable touch in a cruel and unforgiving world, perhaps serving as the greatest lesson to them, at the moment it matters most. On top of this, I love the way that Jacobs supplants psychology towards each of the character, with each daughter using a primal method to disguise the way each of them battles with the trials and tribulations of forthcoming grief. Katie is very much the stoic hardbody, using her words as weapons to battle the regret from past decisions that have distanced her from her father. Christina is a Zen-like optimist, who typically shies away from confrontation. While Rachel refuses to come to terms with reality, which often finds her getting lost in relationships or work that delay without halting the realism of what she’s internally coming to grips with. Each of these women are cloaked in the kind of humanity that make them fallible without feeling ferocious in the way they unintentionally degrade one another, and while most of the movie’s focus pertains to the dynamic between Katie and Christina, it’s clearly evident that Rachel being the red-headed stepchild between the two’s once peaceful existence, is the driving force of the narrative, especially in that she’s treated as such an intruding burden each time she steps into frame to give her two cents on the father who she was arguably closer to than either of her two siblings. This brings me to the technical components of the film, which each brandish naturally this essence of life that continuously keeps moving, despite the lives of these women in this cramped apartment feeling like time has quite literally stopped on their respective private lives that hang inconveniently in the balance. Particularly the editing is most valuable to this sentiment, bringing with it an underlining caustic humility to first act interactions that cap off talking points with an air of unresolved irony that did supplant more than a few laughs to this dramatically dominated occasion. From there, the editing finds its way to the consistency of the following days of the film’s later half, in which they fly by the kind of velocity of a high-speed locomotive, inscribing an urgency of appreciation for the time spent between family that should be observed, even in the least desirable of situations. The editing is matched by the subtleties and intricacies of the movie’s sound designs, which elicit importance in interactions to moments that we as an audience aren’t even privy to. As previously commended, the film doesn’t focus visually on the father character until it absolutely needs to, but even in the motions of characters disappearing off-screen to interact with him and comfort him by his bedside, we can still interpret a few key tender sentiments that demand audiences turn on their closed caption to fully capture, granting a believability in consciousness to the world that is still unraveling, even when it’s not exactly the primary focus of the proceedings. As for the drama, it’s there by the abundance, but inspired and unraveled in ways that are built brilliantly by Jacobs, as these pocketed moments of confrontational inevitability that mirror the inevitability of this frail father figure hanging in the balance. One such key moment between all three of the sisters results in physicality that is a bit difficult to vividly experience, especially in the confines of Sam Levy’s fly-on-the-wall cinematography, which makes things feel so bitterly real and suspenseful, but elicited in ways that serve as the culmination of unaddressed feelings between them that continuously keep growing. This moment is definitely rock bottom for the sisters, as every argument before it could be finalized by a character leaving the room or establishing a passive-aggressive way of taking the blame for everything thrown their way, but between amplified screaming and unforgivable dialogue unleashed between them, it forces a therapeutic resolution to moments that have been brewing in the bushes for quite some time, appraising meaning and value to confrontation, instead of using it shallowly as a pay-off for audiences, like in most dramatic movies. Lastly, I have to talk about the magnitude of the performances because all three women, and even a memorable cameo from Jovan Adepo, bring their best to the occasion, radiating so much personality and nuance to their respective portrayals that grounds them in such a cathartic manner of realism that surprisingly evolves by film’s end. Each of these ladies could carry a movie on their own merits, so when combined it conjures an airborne electricity, with Coon’s mile-a-minute sternness in delivery, Olsen’s fading vulnerability for strength, or Lyonne’s psychological spin of eyes acting conveying her most powerful weapon, capturing the complexity of their character designs, which emotionally serve as the knotted ties that continuously bind them.

NEGATIVES

Jacobs plays most of the expectations of the film with grounded reality, so much so that a wild card ending involving a fantastical sequence is what I feel robs it of its most tender moment. Is this moment effective in giving the girls the reckoning within themselves that they needed? Absolutely, I just don’t feel like it hits the audience as emotionally devastating as it rightfully should, perhaps as a means of being the neat and tidy payoff to the ominous inevitability that we all knew and expected from the opening scene. I’m not exactly advocating for a sad ending in movies where a character’s death hangs over the proceedings, especially in a film that already transcribes so many layers to the confines of grief, but I feel like the closing moments of the film resolve themselves in ways that are so overwhelmingly safe that it kind of miscalculates the magnitude of what’s essentially lost, depicting the women in a tender and vulnerable state, sure, but dramatically undercut by an unnecessary twist and abrupt resolution that felt a bit distracting and predictable to what I expected, resulting in a satisfying but inorganic ending that took the momentum back a step for me.

OVERALL
‘His Three Daughters’ is more of what the Netflix catalogue should ultimately endear itself to, especially the acting showcase between three powerfully driven female performances and Azazel Jacobs’ elegantly masterful and poignant execution outlining the many family dynamics within the perils of grief. Even despite a fantastically exaggerated finale that squanders some of the sentiment, the film is a searingly empathetic character study that will connect to anyone with imperfect relationships among their siblings, reveling in the complexities and nuance of designs that ultimately bond this universal language of grief that nobody is safe from.

My Grade: 9/10 or A