'His Three Daughters' is one of the best films of the year

At the end of Azazel Jacobs His three daughtersI could have drawn a detailed architectural plan of its central location, a rent-controlled apartment in New York. For almost the entire footage, the main characters are trapped there together (and we with them) as they await their father’s imminent death. While palliative care takes its course, the daughters struggle to coexist in their crowded family home.

The place is spacious by Manhattan apartment standards, which is to say tiny by any other standard. The daughters don’t get along. It’s been a long time since the three of them were together for any length of time. But now their father is dying and they must be there to witness the end. So they keep passing each other in the apartment’s main hallway down to the father’s bedroom, in the narrow kitchen to the left, and in the living room and dining room, where they occasionally eat together but more often stare coldly at each other as they return to their own private spaces.

What a sense of place this film has! And a sense of time, with the hours and days in that apartment slowly ticking by as the distant beep of the father's EKG ticks off the seconds passing one by one. And a sense of real, lived-in domestic battles, with the emotional tug-of-war between chatty Katie (Carrie Coon), the optimist Christina (Elizabeth Olsen), and the distant Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), who has been his father's primary caregiver for years, but remains the target of all of Katie's frustrations nonetheless.

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His three daughters It takes its time to explain the reasons for the rift between the women. One of the striking things about the film is how clear the precise nature of the conflict becomes from almost the first scene, simply because of the way these magnificent actresses relate to each other on screen. When you have Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne as your central stars, some things don't need to be said out loud.

On the other hand, this movie is not about a family that says things out loud. Jacobs has created an authentic portrait of the kind of clan in which grudges are perpetually held, so that they can be hinted at in comments and innuendos. If you grew up in a family like this, if you spent time with a family like this, the dynamic between these three women will be immediately recognizable: Katie and Rachel are constantly at odds, and Christina takes on the role of perpetual peacemaker.

Jacobs’ script is masterful in the way it withholds and reveals information, observing with piercing clarity the mundane horror of watching a loved one slowly succumb to cancer. The claustrophobic atmosphere of that apartment is only occasionally released when Rachel sneaks out to smoke some marijuana (Katie despises the habit and demands she smoke outside). This house would be a pressure cooker of family resentments under the best of circumstances. With their father dying just down the hall, the issues between the three that have been simmering for years finally explode.

His three daughters In this situation, the film uses the father in fascinating ways. Despite the close quarters and hours the women spend in their father’s room, the camera never ventures in with them. As time passes, we realize that while the father is a constant topic of discussion, he never appears on camera. He is an absence at the center of the film that seems to foreshadow the main characters’ lives after his death.

The ending of the film makes up for this approach, though talking about exactly how and why seems like a spoiler. So I will say that these scenes not only surprised me, but in some ways left me devastated and elated. It's tragic to see these events unfold, but the way Jacobs handles them is so bold and unusual that I had a huge smile on my face as tears ran down my cheeks.

That was the last time I cried. His three daughtersbut not the first. The climactic scene when these characters finally clear things up between them is even more powerful. All three actresses are exceptional, but Lyonne's performance is astonishing in its nuances. In recent years, she has become one of our most reliable comedic actresses on shows like Russian doll and Poker face. Lyonne causes a lot of laughter in His three daughters with her typically dry delivery, but Rachel also shows off her dramatic range.

The fact that all three stars share top billing and their roles are of similar importance may make the awards nominations difficult; I could easily see them splitting the votes. Personally, I really hope Lyonne doesn't get pushed to the back burner. This is one of the best performances from an actress I've seen in a long time.

His three daughters is opening in limited theaters this weekend before opening in Netflix Later this month. I'm curious how many people will stream the movie. In my experience, people tend to turn to Netflix to get away from situations like the one depicted in His three daughtersso I'm guessing the vast majority of the company's “original” films are bland genre fillers with plot lines so generic and derivative that they sound like they were written by ChatGPT.

I hope people give this movie a chance, whether it's in theaters or streaming. I'm going to think about that apartment and the people who live there for a long time.

RATING: 9/10