TIFF Report #6 — ‘His Three Daughters’

Here’s a film that needs to be tackled. Azazel Jacobs’ “His Three Daughters” which still has no distributor, has turned into one of the more acclaimed films of this year’s festival.

Jacobs, the director of “Terri,” “The Lovers” and “French Exit,” manages to somehow subvert the cliches that come with this type of film, stripping it all down to, wisely, focus on dialogue and his talented lead actresses.

Three grown sisters, in a small Manhattan apartment, drive each other crazy, while their unseen father lies dying of cancer, hooked up to a morphine drip in a nearby bedroom. There are the inevitable DNR forms, hospice nurses who come and go, siblings who collide, and childhood scars that are unearthed.

The film takes place almost entirely in a New York City apartment — it could have veered into staginess, but instead feels very much like a lived-in experience. Jacobs makes sure to avoid this staginess by shooting the apartment from multiple angles.

However, what elevates this film is Jacobs’ intensely personal writing and the fact that these sisters are played by wonderful actresses: Carrie Coon (the control freak), Elizabeth Olsen (serene yogi), and Natasha Lyonne (slacker pothead).

Lyonne’s Rachel actually lives there. She’s a middle-aged stoner who’s been taking care of dad for years, while her two other sisters married and had children. Their conversations, often brittle, always come off as authentic.

These actresses work together with beautifully combative and instinctual ferocity. They’re all great, and the way the film ends turns out to be unexpectedly touching.

The beauty of this film is that there aren’t any forced revelations — the conversations these three women have with each other is more than enough for us to know who they are. It’s a very truthful movie, but also purely humane in its outlook on loss.