1,403 / 5,587 (75%)
Holy Woody Allen, Batman! Writer, Director, Editor, and Producer Azazel Jacobs (French Exit, (2020)) brings us the story of three women brought together in a New York City apartment by their father’s failing health.
Jacobs states his influence from the start with unadorned white font letters against a black background to simple music (not exactly the traditional Allen jazz opening score). He introduces us to our first daughter standing mid-distance against a solid-color wall, giving us a monologue. Carrie Coon (Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)) is Katie, an uptight word-a-second ball of upper-middle-class New England judgment. Time and again we watch her squeeze her world so tight it appears to be oozing out from between her fingers. She lives in Brooklyn and stops by her father’s apartment sparingly.
Christina (Elizabeth Olsen in one of her most challenging roles to date) lives across the country with her husband, raising her daughter, and bullies life with relentless optimism. Natasha Lyonne’s (But I’m a Cheerleader, (1999)) Rachel is a stoner, smoking 3 or 4 joints a day, living with and caring for her father between placing bets on whatever sports are broadcast. When the father landed in hospice care, she withdraws to her room.
Jacob’s dialogue, mis en scene, and characterizations are all modern homages to Woody Allen’s familial New York films (Hannah and Her Sisters, (1986), Husbands and Wives, (1992)). However, His Three Daughters is more contained, with less movement, and the city is celebrated through a character’s words rather than romantic cinematography.
We sit with each daughter, learn pieces of their lives, and how they relate to their father and each other. The family’s tapestry is gradually unwound as they begin coming to peace with their father’s imminent passing. Jacob’s writing lacks some of the wit or self-awareness of prime Woody Allen and can feel stagey as each character is given their own monologue (or monologues) to deliver in different parts of the apartment. His Three Daughters succeeds, though, in creating a lived-in world with real women who have shaped and been molded by the totality of their lives. Love and family are complex with competing and contradicting experiences, emotions, and perspectives, often within the same person.
Despite Jacob’s overwhelming creative input, His Three Daughters belongs equally to Coon, Olsen, and Lyonne whose performances are the actual heartbeat of the material regardless of how many hats the multitalented filmmaker wore. This isn’t the story of the loss of a father. His Three Daughters is about how a father’s life and death influence the women’s understanding of each other.
> Transformers One (2024)
< Marygoround (2020)
> Sisyphus (1974)
> Vanya on 42nd Street (1994)
> Mother India (1957)
> Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931)
> Tuesday (2023)
> Joy Ride (2023)
> Convict 13 (1920)
< Holiday (1938)
> The Blues Brothers (1980)
> Miss Congeniality (2000)
