Ivan Radford | On 22, Sep 2024

Director: Azazel Jacobs
Cast: Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, Jay O Sanders
Certificate: 15

“Everything that tries to show death gets it wrong,” reflects Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) partway through His Three Daughters. She’s recalling what her father (Jay O Sanders) once told her while watching a movie – and she’s doing it while he’s in the other room of his New York apartment, terminally ill. His three daughters – Christina, Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) and Katie (Carrie Coon) – have gathered there for what they expect to be his final days.

Christina is the youngest of the trio and flew the nest without really turning back – now with a daughter of her own, whom she mentions almost every other sentence. Katie is the oldest and descends upon the Manhattan pad with a judgemental stare and sternly folded arms, playing the cross parent by default because that’s the role she already has in her own home. Rachel, the stepsister, would be the odd one out if she hadn’t also been the person living with their dad and caring for him – although the others suspect that’s mostly so she had somewhere to live while gambling on football and smoking weed. They’ve all lived largely separate lives, and they’ve all known different sides of their dad – fragmented parts of a now unknowable whole.

Writer and director Azazel Jacobs – who impressed with The Lovers and worked with Olsen on Sorry for Your Loss – has a knack for sharply observing relationships with a tender honesty. His stripped down script is 144 minutes of little but talking and silence, almost entirely within the same two or three rooms – and, when we need a breather, a bench in the courtyard outside. It’s a chamber piece that leans into the claustrophobic, isolating bubble that grief brings with it. It’s the kind of thoughtful, understated filmmaking that struggles to get made in 2024, and the fact that it does it all so handsomely and modestly makes it one of the best films of the year.

While there’s a raw quality to the writing, Jacobs is smart enough to let the cast cook with it. They are sensational chefs, putting on just enough of a show that the theatrical vibe of this intimate piece feels baked in – we watch as the three women perform their best selves for their estranged family, only gradually being able to let their guard down and be sincere with each other.

Elizabeth Olsen is magnificent as the almost unnervingly upbeat Christina, permanently smiling and looking on the bright side with a sing-song delivery that doesn’t stop when she’s not on the phone to her daughter. Carrie Coon is brilliantly frosty as the shut-off bully who thinks she’s being honest and compassionate when she’s actually just listing people’s flaws to their faces. Holding them together is the impeccable Natasha Lyonne, who builds on her work in Russian Doll, Poker Face and Orange Is the New Black with a turn that’s so understated you almost don’t notice that her laidback black sheep is the most mature of the bunch.

We begin with what are essentially monologues from each of them, and the script deftly steers us from separate remarks delivered at odds to an actual conversation that flows back and forth – from individual exchanges with one listening in to all three of them engaging together. Attempting to make peace while still throwing passive-aggressive hostilities around, it’s only once they stop and listen at the same time that they begin to allow each other to exist. It’s a masterclass in ensemble dynamics, one that you only appreciate once you’ve had time to process your emotions after the end credits have rolled.

“The only way to communicate how death truly feels is through absence,” continues Christina. “Everything else is fantasy.” As they attempt to cumulatively compose an obituary that sums up their dad, Jacobs profoundly finds a way to reconcile absence with fantasy, past memories with present tensions, and unspoken conflict with much-needed resolution. When it’s gone, you truly feel it.

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