His Three Daughters (2024)
Director: Azazel Jacobs
Screenwriter: Azazel Jacobs
Starring: Natasha Lyonne, Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen
Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) has been living at home with her father, Vincent (Jay O. Sanders), as his cancer gets progressively worse. The decline in his health has become her entire world, and she has to adapt to coping as everything she has been living for is about to unravel.
As Vincent’s death looms, Rachel opens the home she has been sharing with him to Katie (Carrie Coon) and Christina (Elizabeth Olsen). Sisters but not. Strangers but not. Up until this moment the three women have led disparate lives, but Azazel Jacobs throws them together under the microscope in the most intense and distressing circumstances.
Oldest sister, Katie, is a woman used to being in control, and she doesn’t seem to back down in the face of the uncontrollable – teenagers, death, or siblings. Compulsively-into-yoga Christina has taken on the role of mediator; a new mother herself, she is desperate for a happy and well-adjusted family, despite the harm this constant yearning appears to be doing to her. His Three Daughters is a close-up examination of dysfunction, and fragmented family.
This isn’t a film to only half pay attention to. The dialogue is dense and filled with exposition, but just as much importance lies in what is unspoken. The simmering angst is palpable. His Three Daughters is a bittersweet exploration into grief and acceptance.
Everything about the film is highly choreographed, from the title (which works hard to make us view these women as not quite sisters, joined only by their relationship to their dad), to the cramped apartment setting. It is no mistake that Katie is often shown in front of a blank wall, the uncluttered background reflecting her personality. She is focused and controlling. Dogged even. The other two women are often framed by household detritus, a loud background for their more chaotic approaches to life.
Much like a stage show, with long monologues and slow action, it is a close, tense, and claustrophobic screen story. Due to the nature of the film, so much weight is on the shoulders of the actors, so it is a good job they are all exceptional. Natasha Lyonne is well known for comedy, and while Elizabeth Olsen started her career with similarly quiet films such as Martha, Marcy, May, Marlene (2011) and Liberal Arts (2012), she is now most recognised for her work with Marvel. It’s always exciting to watch an actor show their full range, and all three of the main cast play their parts exquisitely. But Lyonne is the standout star of the show. Her character Rachel is the most complex, and Lyonne’s ability to play vulnerability is completely unmatched.
With Lyonne and Coon in the cast, and Maya Rudolph listed amongst the producers, it isn’t surprising that His Three Daughters has been billed as a tragicomedy. It’s hard not to expect a few laughs, even if they come from darker humour. However, this film is definitely a drama, just one with a few wry smiles. It isn’t a funny film, not like other dysfunctional family dramas The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), or August: Osage County (2013). August: Osage County is probably the most similar to His Three Daughters in terms of themes, but that film’s larger cast and much stranger characters allowed for some moments of hilarity and surrealism that made for a more interesting film. His Three Daughters is left slightly lacking in these terms.
This is only a consideration due to the typically funny people associated with it. If you are to go in to this film expecting riotous laughter, you will be disappointed, but if you go expecting a serious and poignant slice of life, then you’ll get everything you want.
Score: 19/24