Set on the grounds of the Hillman Housing Corporation, a co-op on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, “His Three Daughters” (2023) revolves around three very different sisters, Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), Katie (Carrie Coon) and Christina (Elizabeth Olsen), holding vigil as their father, Vincent (Jay O. Sanders), lies dying in his room. Being together in close quarters and facing the inevitable death of their only living parent, the sisters rub each other the wrong way. Once their father dies, will they go their separate ways or stay connected? Director and writer Azazel Jacobs’ latest film will have a limited theatrical run starting September 6th, 2024 before heading to Netflix on September 20th, but do not wait until then to see this poignant film featuring stellar performances.
During the first half of “His Three Daughters,” Katie could be called Karen. She barks orders at Rachel, tries to control an unpredictable situation and generally stays busy and angry. She acts as if everything would fall apart if she wasn’t there, but she lives in Brooklyn with her two kids and is not normally at her dad’s place. Christina also has two kids, which she left behind in California, but they are younger, and it is her first time apart from them. The youngest sister spends as much time as possible with their unconscious father. Pothead and sports bettor Rachel is the one who has been holding down the fort and caring for their father while they were away but hugs the margins of their home once the sisters descend and fill the apartment. To avoid conflict, she goes outside to smoke or stays in her room to watch television, but despite her best efforts, it is impossible for her to stay out of their way.
The sisters are not entirely left alone with each other. Angel (Rudy Galvan), a hospice worker, visits daily to answer their questions or estimate how long Vincent has before he dies. A nurse (Jasmine Bracey) spends a few hours at night to give them time to rest or be together without fear that no one is watching over Vincent. Eventually Rachel and Vincent’s friend, Benji (Jovan Adepo), another sports lover, visits to watch the game with Rachel and offer psychological support, but his visit functions as a catalyist so the sisters’ can confront their issues with each other. Of course, it is easy to predict whether they will be able to understand each other in time to properly focus on their father and comfort each other once he is gone, but “His Three Daughters” is not about gimmicks or plot twists. It is about a universal human experience filtered through a character study and interpersonal dynamic between three specific people whose predictable circumstances renders it relatable yet still mysterious because of the nature of how impending loss affects everyone differently. While it never turns schmaltzy, be on the alert for someone randomly chopping onions nearby throughout the entire runtime.
A fair criticism of “His Three Daughters” would be that it feels like a play, not a movie. There is a lot of dialogue and prose dumping in the disguise of obituary drafting, only hearing one side of phone calls, and during conversations with people who are not a part of the family. What makes it a movie? The performances because if it was a play, the actors would have to exaggerate and leave the realm of realism to project to the back row. The actors’ relationship to the apartment interior and quieter moments requires a camera to observe them such as Lyonne pulling out the Denzel Washington single tear from “Glory” move not once but twice, possibly more as she stays just beyond her father’s door. A stage would feel vast instead of the cramped quarters of a Manhattan apartment thus posing another obstacle in conveying to the audience how the characters feel.
Manhattan is also the most photogenic city on Earth, and while “His Three Daughters” gives only a glimpse of the skyline from the apartment window, Jacobs also depicts how a big city actually feels like a small town, especially on the Lower East Side where rent control still exists, and gentrification has not entirely succeeded at pushing out the working class New Yorkers in favor of the transplant rubes whose naivete and eagerness drives up the rent and pushes out the natives. While Rachel is monosyllabic and retiring in her home, on the street, she is free to be herself and offer a broad smile, a friendly exchange or a status update of her and her father’s situation. Even though Jacobs only shows one of the people that she talks to Victor (Jose Febus), the co-op’s security guard, Lyonne’s performance and the off-screen responses conveys a larger bonhomie and familiarity that fills the neighborhood. It is completely accurate that an older man would have the security guard job forever and know Rachel since she was a kid. All these brief quotidian moments carry more authenticity than if it was a documentary about life. Movies transport us to places and feel more emotionally resonant than reality because of the time that it offers moviegoers to savor what we take for granted.
As the film approaches the denouement, “His Three Daughters” loses confidence that its audience will not understand one of the narrative’s messages, the inability to convincingly represent the experience of losing a loved one. Christina gets saddled with explaining that any media depiction is just fantasy. At the eighty-three-minute mark, Jacobs gives a sneak peek into how that fantasy would play out for this family, and it is the one point that could lose a lot of people, which is not bad for a 1 hour 41-minute run time, but it is a shame to peter out so close to the ending. It will throw cold water on the reverie and remind everyone that they are watching a film. It is a well-acted scene, but unlike every scene that preceded it, the strings and manipulation are visible. It would have been better to convey absence without sentimentality slathered on like cream cheese on a bagel.
Kudos to Jacobs for also handling racism in a subtle way. Benji is a big Black man who is not threatening. For him, the loss of Vincent is felt before Vincent’s heart stops beating because there is no warmth in the apartment. He is welcomed superficially, but not like a family friend, and he refuses to let it go without noting it. Katie’s reaction makes her fear that the nurse, who is also Black, will think that she is racist, and the nurse just wants to leave at the end of her shift without betraying her real feelings about the situation or wasting her personal time on the emotional labor of reassuring a stranger. It is Schrodinger’s racism with no resolution. The impact is racist with the intent being unclear. While many could extrapolate that many New Yorkers, including filmmakers like Woody Allen, live a life that is somehow missing any Black people (Rebecca Hall was a secret to most until recent), it is a nasty open secret that the reason could be racism even though New Yorkers pride themselves on appearing open minded, liberal and progressive. Presidon’t did not come from the Midwest or the South. Sadly, he is one of ours (technically Queens is NYC).
“His Three Daughters” is a must-see film, especially if you love anyone in the cast or just want to be in that New York State of mind. Prepare to weep early in the proceeding. Please pay the big bucks required to see it in theaters because voting with your money is the only way to ensure that films like this continue to get made.
