His Three Daughters
Directed by Azazel JacobsThis tense, touching and funny portrait of family dynamics follows three estranged sisters as they converge in a New York apartment to care for their ailing father and try to mend their own broken relationship with one another.
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His Three Daughters Ratings & Reviews
- Kevin WardJuly 1, 2025A portrait of grief and reconciliation. Grief can be messy and often further complicated by fractured familial relationships. Deaths often force us to reckon with (or at least confront) these divides if for no other reason than to work through some of the necessary procedural tasks associated with end of life. Having recently gone through a similar situation there’s a great deal of this that hit close to home. You find yourself doing a fair amount of self-bargaining deciding what transgressions can you choose to let go of in the name allowing everyone to grieve in their own way. Natasha Lyonne is a standout performance here, and oddly this is a rare instance where I didn’t really care for Carrie Coon’s performance at all. It’s easy to look past as this is an effective and moving drama.
- rg9400November 1, 2024At one point in this movie, a character comments about how books and movies often fail to depict death. As she's trying to explain what they lack, she's interrupted. Though she does come back to elaborate further, I feel like this interaction is a microcosm of what this movie is trying to do -- trying to depict grief differently but constantly being interrupted before it can get to anything of depth, so when the point eventually arrives, it has no weight behind it. The movie depicts three daughters who have been forced back together due to their dying father being placed in hospice. Instead of approaching grief with the thunderous emotions that you'd expect from most dramas, this movie instead focuses far more on the mundane and the banal arguments between the three daughters. It's very understated, with little to no flashy cinematography or score, instead entirely relying on dialogue and acting akin to a teleplay. The movie certainly has star power, but while Carrie Coon is able to infuse her character with depth, I found Natasha Lyonne playing the same character she normally does without bringing anything new. Elizabeth Olsen feels almost alien in this movie, her fast-paced dialogue lacking the naturalism the others have. Having been oh-too-keenly aware of the feeling of watching and caring for a close relative in hospice, I did actually think the movie was able to capture some of it well. There is pressure building between each conversation, fault lines littering commonday tasks. The mundanity of it all is very much part of the journey. However, it's simply not engaging by itself. At times, it feels like watching paint dry. And the drama between the three sisters lacks the depth to make up for the boredom. I was expecting something meatier, more cathartic, and an attempt at some sort of insight. The movie just fails to deliver on these fronts, and without being able to even deliver on the acting across its three stars, there isn't much left in this movie to appreciate.
