Azazel Jacobs' His Three Daughters is an emotionally charged drama, blending dry humor with heavy themes like grief, family dynamics, and personal guilt. This film is less about grand, sweeping moments and more about the small, intimate tensions that arise when people with a shared history are thrust back together under stressful circumstances. It’s a film that wears its heart on its sleeve without becoming sentimental, exploring the uncomfortable truths that come with family, death, and unresolved issues.
The story centers on the three sisters, each bringing their own baggage to the apartment as they prepare to say goodbye to their father, Vincent, who is bedridden due to terminal cancer. Katie (Carrie Coon), the eldest, is pragmatic and rigid, but her control slips as she struggles to write an obituary for a man she realizes she barely knows. Christina (Elizabeth Olsen), the middle child, clings to moments of nostalgia, finding small, strange comforts in the hospice nurse who shares her daughter’s name. Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), the youngest, but also the one who has been the primary caregiver, carries a heavy burden as the makeshift nurse while trying to keep her own life from falling apart.
What stands out about His Three Daughters is how real the film feels—like eavesdropping on actual, messy family conversations. The dialogue is sharp and laced with tension, but also with an undercurrent of love that keeps these sisters connected, even if it’s barely holding together. The sisters are estranged for good reason: there are years of unspoken resentment and misunderstanding simmering beneath every conversation.
Natasha Lyonne as Rachel delivers a standout performance, perfectly embodying a woman both emotionally exhausted and numb. She spends most of the film trying to avoid entering her father’s room, instead focusing on sports betting and, much to Katie’s chagrin, smoking marijuana in the apartment. She’s the one who has been there for their father, yet she can’t bring herself to fully engage with him in his final moments—something that clearly eats away at her but that she hides behind a tough, detached exterior.
Carrie Coon’s portrayal of Katie is the perfect foil to Lyonne’s Rachel. Katie is all about control and practicality, but her inability to write the obituary underscores her own struggles with vulnerability. There’s a brilliant tension between these two sisters, who seem to represent opposing forces—one desperate to avoid the situation and the other trying to control it but failing miserably.
Elizabeth Olsen as Christina offers a more nuanced performance. Caught in the middle, Christina is less focused on the caregiving and more concerned with finding meaning in the situation. Her obsession with the nurse's name, which echoes that of her own daughter, is a subtle but powerful nod to how grief and loss manifest in strange, sometimes irrational ways.
The confined setting—the father’s apartment—adds to the sense of claustrophobia, with the walls seeming to close in on the sisters as tensions escalate. The apartment itself becomes a battleground, not just for the practicalities of caregiving but also for the sisters’ emotional baggage. Jacobs doesn’t need to take us anywhere else because the tension in the room is thick enough to sustain the film. Every creak of the floorboards, every glance exchanged between the sisters feels loaded with decades of unsaid words.
The film is largely dialogue-driven, with the sisters’ conversations providing both the humor and the emotional weight. There are moments where it feels like nothing is happening, but that’s exactly the point. The film is about the in-between moments—the long pauses, the awkward silences, and the suppressed anger. And yet, there’s a beauty to the mundanity. It’s the kind of film where nothing seems to happen, but everything is happening at once. Each sister is forced to confront their grief, their guilt, and, perhaps most significantly, their relationships with one another.
Jacobs masterfully avoids turning His Three Daughters into a typical “tearjerker.” The film is, of course, sad, but it doesn’t beat you over the head with sentimentality. Instead, it allows the audience to feel the weight of the situation in the same way the characters do—slowly, with all the complexity and nuance that comes with family relationships. There’s no sudden catharsis, no dramatic resolutions. Instead, the film presents grief and loss as an ongoing process, with no neat endings.
One of the film’s strengths is its refusal to give us a clear “villain” among the sisters. While Katie and Christina might criticize Rachel for “waiting for their father to die” so she can inherit the apartment, there’s an understanding that they, too, are guilty of avoiding responsibility. There are no easy answers or clean resolutions, and the film is better for it.
If there’s a criticism to be made, it’s that the film occasionally leans a little too much on its dialogue, and some conversations feel like they cover the same ground more than once. However, this slight redundancy also adds to the realism of the story—when dealing with family, people often repeat themselves, circle the same arguments, and rarely say what they really mean.
In the end, His Three Daughters is a deeply affecting film that offers a poignant look at family dynamics in the face of death. It’s about the messiness of caregiving, the weight of expectations, and the complexity of sibling relationships. It’s not an easy watch, but it’s a rewarding one for anyone who’s ever had to navigate the difficulties of family during a time of crisis. This film serves as a reminder that sometimes, showing up is all we can do—and that might just be enough.
Final Score- [9.5/10]
Reviewed by - Anjali Sharma
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Publisher at Midgard Times