His Three Daughters Confronts the Intimate, Sometimes Stuffy Tedium of Death
The pandemic was a propulsive moment for a few micro-genres in film, one of these being the intimate, single-location drama. Films born of smallness—not just in location, but also in cast size, narrative scale and so on (think of The Whale and One Night in Miami, for example)—were just the easiest to make. A common denominator among these movies, though, is that as a result of these elements they could feel like filmed stage plays; most were overwritten and stuffy, unsure of how to write characters in films with limited amounts of action. Though produced far after lockdown, His Three Daughters feels a bit like one of these COVID-dictated movies.
His Three Daughters centers on three sisters—Katie (Carrie Coon), Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) and Christina (Elizabeth Olsen)—who convene in their father Vincent’s (Jay O. Sanders) cramped apartment in New York City to take care of him in his final days. Most of the film takes place just between the three, with only a few other characters—a local cop, Rachel’s hook-up (Jovan Adepo) and some nurses—in the mix. It’s interested in the sisters’ grief, in each of their own peculiar resentments, in their ennui.
In this sense, the single-location drama feels like a natural fit—it becomes a spatial representation of the women’s stilling psycho-emotional concerns. Death, grief and resentment are dealt with slowly, with listlessness rather than verve, so that His Three Daughters’ sedentary nature need not be a detracting point of the film.
And yet, His Three Daughters struggles to find a tone that coheres, its characters and their soaring dramatic crescendos at times feeling discordant with its understated moments of quiet mundanity. Writer-director Azazel Jacobs is interested in etching three women that are acutely distinct from each other, but for a while they feel more like types than people. Katie is organized, learned, a planner, a woman who hasn’t smoked weed since her adolescence; Rachel is her foil, an aimless slacker who prefers waking and baking to anything else. Christina sits somewhere in the middle, misunderstood by both her sisters as a deadhead-turned-meditation practitioner who possesses a calmness that neither of her sisters do.
The performances of these three seem at odds with each other. Coon exudes a theatrical cadence, her anxieties and rationalizations rapid and fully formed even when her character appears to be thinking out loud. Olsen is a bit slower with her words and less careful with her enunciation, though her gestures implying deliberation appear overly affected. It’s Lyonne that finds the most naturalistic performance, one that feels most suited to the world of the film, with her distinct unreserved charm feeling specific to her character and true to life.
As His Three Daughters progresses, it utilizes the dredging work of death to illustrate the chasm between the sisters—especially between Katie and Rachel. This work includes writing obituaries, cleaning out their father’s home and managing nurses’ schedules. This is effective, if only to show a very basic reality: that death is so much more beyond the act, that it’s also all the quotidian concerns that come with managing it—financially, practically, emotionally—and dealing with all the stewing emotions that come to the surface during and following it.
But similar dynamics repeat themselves between Katie and Rachel too often. Katie wants to write the obituary ahead of time; Rachel barely wants to step foot into her father’s room, reluctant to acknowledge the little time he has left. Rachel leaves old jars of her father’s food in the fridge; Katie is frustrated that Rachel, their father’s primary caretaker, keeps the home so messy. It’s easy to sympathize with Rachel here, not having come to terms with her own grief yet—one that is unique among her sisters as his only adopted daughter. But Katie’s characterization feels a bit one-note, and it’s clear by the picture’s end that this isn’t His Three Daughters’ intention.
Still, Jacobs concocts something palpably stirring in one of His Three Daughters’ final scenes—opting, as he has in the past (see: the cat in French Exit), to use the surreal in his excavation of death and grief. If the micro-drama over-proliferated cinema as a result of the pandemic, His Three Daughters, considering its subject matter, is much more appropriately situated within its small, stationary setting. I’m not sure it dodges the stuffy allegations, and its tedium can feel more contained and mechanical than it intimates. But then again, grief is defined by its tedium, if anything.
Director: Azazel Jacobs
Writers: Azazel Jacobs
Starring: Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, Rudy Galvan, Jose Febus, Jasmine Bracey, Jay O. Sanders, Jovan Adepo
Release Date: September 6, 2024; September 20, 2024 (Netflix)
Hafsah Abbasi is a film critic who has covered the Sundance Film Festival and the Mill Valley Film Festival in years past. She currently resides in Berkeley, California. Find her latest writing at https://twitter.com/hafs_uh.