HIS THREE DAUGHTERS– 4 STARS

LESSON #1: EVERYONE DEALS WITH DEATH IN THEIR OWN WAY– It would be easy to chalk up the drama found in the new Netflix film His Three Daughters to the simple catch-all statement of “everyone deals with death in their own way.” Wisdom shows that to be certainly true, but there are sliding scale qualifiers, starting off with the timetable. The jolt of someone passing away unexpectedly is far different from the grueling agony of watching and waiting for someone to die gradually. There’s a guaranteed debate out there of which one is worse, and funeral services know it. Even so, the avalanche of the grief process arrives in both scenarios where a hand of two will need to be held regardless. The next question is who's holding the hands.

Written, directed, edited, and produced by emerging filmmaker Azazel Jacobs (The Lovers, French Exit), His Three Daughters occupies the final days of an anticipated death. Vincent (long-time stalwart character actor Jay O. Sanders), the father of three adult daughters from two previously deceased women, is bedridden and receiving daily nursing visits. The oldest sister Katie (Carrie Coon of Gone Girl) and youngest Christina (Elizabeth Olsen, in her first non-Marvel project in seven years) have come from out of town to their old New York apartment where the middle sibling Rachel (Poker Face Emmy nominee) has always stayed living. The hope is that everyone takes shifts and shared responsibility for Vinnie’s round-the-clock care. 

LESSON #2: WAITING FOR DEATH– The lead nurse Angel (Slice’s Rudy Galvan) prepares them with the updated lowdown that Vinnie’s health has reached a point where it will likely not improve, meaning he could go any time. While Kate, Christina, and Rachel can take stock that they have made themselves available and present for the inevitable end, the uncertainty of the actual when turns this apartment into a figurative cage. Every respiratory gurgle or fluctuating beep on the heart monitor in Vincent’s room sets off dreadful alarms within the watchful women. On those woeful pins and needles, everyone is afraid to leave and miss the crucial departing moment and their chance to say a final goodbye. This dour state of clockwatching creates varying levels of distress for our titular trio.

Matching the aforementioned catch-all, each lead in His Three Daughters approaches this grim certitude from divergent places. Being the eldest, Kate is the default responsible one bossing everyone around and handling the unfortunate details like obituaries and the legal paperwork. True to her youth, Christina from California is the most outwardly emotional and progressive of the three. She never misses a minute to read or sing to her unconscious father and makes time to strengthen her own mindful self-care through yoga and constant positive talk.

And then there’s Rachel. Katie’s supervising glare frames Rachel as the lazy freeloader. She doesn’t want to enter that wired room to see her father in that state and, instead, zones out through frequent and heavy pot smoking sessions and watching sports on TV for betting purposes, an expensive and superstitious passion she shared with Vinnie. Since she never left and watched– and maybe even enabled– Vinnie’s decline for years, Rachel gets saddled with a small share of the blame for the present situation from Kate. After all, Rachel is getting the rent-controlled digs when Vinnie is gone. Death looks to bring freedom and improvement her way.

Contrarily, the observant camera of cinematographer Sam Levy (Frances Ha, Lady Bird) in His Three Daughters takes opportunities to follow Rachel’s revelatory point of view. Away from her domineering and judgmental siblings, Jacobs displays how her withdrawn silence comes from a far different familial perspective than aloofness or immaturity. When pushed and prodded past her comfortably copacetic thresholds, she’s not afraid to finally air grievances the others don’t want to hear, especially at this fragile time. In this pivotal role, Natasha Lyonne has never been better on the big screen.

LESSON #3: WHAT HOLDS SIBLINGS TOGETHER WHEN PARENTS ARE GONE– Normally, this premise is built on either bonded triangular strength of inseparable sisters for sympathy or the quirks of a dysfunctional family played for comedic laughts. The hearty innards of His Three Daughters reveal the opposite. As hours and days together grow, the thread this sibling relationship was hanging on by only frays further to the breaking point. Rightly so, it is Rachel who calls it out the big questions of what type of relationship will be left between them when their dad is gone and what happens to that unanchored brood.

What makes this raw outpouring of emotions tangible are the pointed performances of the three extremely talented actresses brought together for this clash. Lyonne is the linchpin, but her angles do not work without contrasting and equal emotional breakages coming successfully from Coon and Olsen. Azazel Jacobs unravels the His Three Daughters characters in long and patient scenes that could just as easily have been played dramatically across a Broadway stage. Powered by their proud voices, his feature is molded by an obstacle course of monologues that convey streams of reactive conscience, tension-spiking statements, and turn-taking monologues of reflection.

The centerpiece scene is a climactic living room sitdown where old wounds are aired out and cried over with bracing lucidity. By the end of that scene (and later after the entire movie), an engrossed and impressed viewer could fill a clipboard or two tally-marking the scoring balance between earnest apologies against attempted and failed compromises. These exposed fractures in His Three Daughters are fascinating in their complication and frankness beyond the typical grief management narratives. No one ever said catharsis was easy to acquire, and that is the case here.