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Do Their Hearts Belong to Daddy?
Rachel, the apparent outlier of Vincent’s three daughters, fills the screen. She’s working class, entertains herself and her father by watching sports on TV and placing multiple small bets, and smokes lots of pot to get through the day, as she says. Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) and Vincent (Jay O. Sanders) live in his rent-controlled New York City apartment, as he lays dying. Lyonne is fascinating to watch as the reticent, malleable-faced, flaming redhead Rachel. Familiar to TV viewers for “Russian Doll” (which she co-created, stars in, and writes and directs) and “Orange Is the New Black,” Lyonne is the heart of the film.
Above, the three daughters with their disparate personalities, two of them caricatures.
Fragile Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) left, hectoring Katie (Carrie Coon) middle,
and smoldering Rachel (Natasha Lyonne).
If it had a heart. The other two daughters are caricatures: Katie (Carrie Coon) is the hard-ass, rational, hectoring, controlling eldest whose obsession—to obtain a Do Not Resuscitate order for her comatose father—is indicative of her transactional approach to her life and the people in it. Fragile Christina (Elizabeth Olsen, younger sister of the former pre-teen icons the Olsen twins) was once a hippie-chick/flower child, still a committed Deadhead, apparently replacing inadequate parenting with intense fandom. She just wants everyone to get along.
Will Dad ever come out of the bedroom?
There’s material to work with here, but the screenplay fails to cooperate, offering only the most predictable questions and avenues: Will Dad ever come out of the bedroom? Who has the highest emotional IQ? Is Rachel just angling for the father’s rent-controlled apartment? Will Katie acknowledge all Rachel has done for their Dad? Christina suggests that they all “tell their stories,” but it never happens.
There’s a deus-ex-machina towards the end that adds no meaning at all.
Yes, in a slow-ish reveal, we find out something about the women’s blood relationship to each other. Angel (Rudy Galvan), the appropriately mis-named guy from Hospice, drops by regularly to inform them Dad will die any day, a reminder they resent. And Katie and Rachel come to (a few) blows. But none of it seems credible or shapes the story in a compelling way. There’s a deus-ex-machina towards the end (we’re doing our best not to spoil what little of interest there is in the plot) that adds no meaning at all—because the women don’t see or hear the deus. What’s the point of that?
Above, the cliched ending tableau: sitting center Christina (Olsen),
right Katie (Coon), and Rachel (Lyonne).
One could conceivably put “His Three Daughters” in the subgenre of “What Makes a Family?” but it’s been done with far more passion and subtlety. It pales next to “Shoplifters” (2018), “The Quiet Girl” (2022), or even this year’s North Macedonian “Housekeeping for Beginners” and "Totem," the Mexican film centered around a dying patriarch.
When the three daughters try to write their father’s obituary, there’s no soul in it.
The final scene, when the sisters form a tableau on the couch, in apparent harmony after Dad’s death, is simply implausible. Director Azazel Jacobs doesn’t go too far in having the three women bond, but even that single evocation of newfound intimacy does not logically or emotionally emerge from what’s gone before. We’re given little background on the three women or their father. When the three daughters try to write their father’s obituary, there’s no soul in it; Jacobs can’t muster anything revealing in the words of Rachel, who knew Dad best.
Netflix didn’t produce the film, but it did acquire it, for good reason. With its two-dimensional characters (Rachel excepted), simplistic script, and contrived device at the end, it’s perfect for TV. Take that back. Many TV series are much better.
She says: I’m stupefied by the high Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritics ratings.
He says: Will achieve fame as a film-school case study of what happens—or doesn’t—when there’s no Act 2.
Date: 2024
Director: Azazel Jacobs
Starring: Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon, Rudy Galvan, Jay O. Sanders
Country: United States
Language: English
Runtime: 101 minutes
Other Awards: one win to date
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