‘His Three Daughters’ review: An introspective tearjerker

Written and directed by Azazel Jacobs, His Three Daughters is an exercise in sparsity. Set within the walls of a well-loved, confining New York apartment, this tender and textured drama elicits tears as it exhumes the minutiae of grief. A life is lived, mourned, and laughed over — sometimes in the same beat. How we find these characters and how they process their ensuing loss breathes such credible life into the film. The film has such an abundance of interiority and heart, but it’s done with deceptively little complexity. To be fair, this is something relatively true to life, too. We all possess so much more than what others perceive. We are all vast and vibrantly alive until we’re boiled down into a 200-word blurb. 

Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne play Katie, Christina, and Rachel, the titular three. And all three have their distinctive personalities that chip at the edges of their neatly holding shit-together masks. Katie is the hardest to warm to though Coon imbues her with a long-suffering demeanor that aids in fleshing her out. Olsen’s Christina errs the closest to parody, but again, there’s just enough there beneath her wide-eyed stare and rubber-band taut smile that suggests there’s more to her than her keep-the-peace facade. Rachel is the most lived-in, and Lyonne’s gravelly tones once again lend her character levity even as she suffers the exhaustive process of waiting for her dad to die. 

The three gather at their father’s home — where Rachel also lives — to await his death. Now in hospice care and receiving a steady drip of morphine, there’s little the three can do other than gripe about nonsensical issues (rotting apples) or sit vigil at their father’s bedside, hoping for some last moment of clarity to assuage any lingering guilts. The steady beeping of their father’s heart monitor scores the quiet story, the only real indication of his presence for most of the film. 

It would be easy to say that it’s the only real proof of his existence, proof of life if it weren’t for the three daughters at its center. All three have to deal with living in one another’s space as old and new grievances rear their ugly heads. However, they’re are bonded by the inexplicable nature of waiting out a loved one’s last days. Their grief prolongs itself, as they wither and rage, lashing out at one another yet sharing knowing looks as they mock the man handling their father’s case. These three, along with the apartment they adorn, are proof of Vinny’s life. Vinny who, in a revealing third-act moment, gets his own chance at agency as he, too, mourns. 

His Three Daughters might be a tearjerker, but there’s no forced sentimentality. We don’t believe that these three will have perfectly mended their fractured relationships by the film’s end. Instead, it finds its compassion and humanity in the small, intimate moments. Katie and Christina find greater depth and personality in their closed-off conversations with their daughters, feeling the full ferocious cyclical nature of being a mother to girls while being daughters who are grieving their dad. Meanwhile, Jovan Adepo, as Rachel’s boyfriend Benjy, gets a standout moment where he goes to bat for Rachel, recognizing his grief as someone who’s spent time with Vinny and seen his deteriorating state up close and personal. 

If anything, the tone is a little inconsistent, though the competing tones are strong in their individual moments. Jacobs adopts a theatrical approach in the opening as characters monologue at one another. It highlights their solitude as they all try to reach one another, talking without fully communicating. This veers off course a little as the tone warms, and the three find greater links in their relationship, and inside jokes and stories pop up. It’s the third act and its dalliance with surrealism that will no doubt polarize. 

But that third act fully encapsulates what makes His Three Daughters such an engaging and emotional viewing experience. The film and Jacobs’s script excel by stripping itself bare. These characters try to guard themselves, but their vulnerability is apparent as they face a certain inevitability while trying to mend themselves. But for all the evident grief and how the film grapples with the magnitude of life and death, it also speaks to the necessity of celebrating life. The details of it mean the world to us but seem inconsequential elsewhere. 

When writing their father’s obituary, they stumble in trying to avoid simple list-making. Yes, he was a sports fan and liked his job, but there’s more to him than that. Rachel, in perhaps the best encapsulation of the absurdity of grief, suggests a simple ode to the man:

“He married a couple of crazy bitches and raised a few crazy bitches.” 

And sometimes, that’s all we can afford. A laugh in the face of overwhelming sadness. Love in the face of loss and humor when strictly mourning cheapens the magnitude of a person’s life. His Three Daughters understands the intricate nature of families, the bonds of sisters, and how we can miss not just those faces who have long passed but those who are simply miles away. 

The bottom line.

His Three Daughters, anchored by a tremendous trio of performances, is a compassionate meditation on life, loss, and how families fracture and mend. Told with a precision that hones in on tight corners and forced smiles in equal measure, the film refuses to try and answer unanswerable questions. Instead, it patiently sits and observes as three women face a world without their dad while understanding that, in his wake, they are his tethers to life. 

His Three Daughters is available now on Netflix. Watch the trailer below.

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Images courtesy of Netflix.