This film spotlights three sisters working to come together during a time of pain and grief– spiraling many emotions of regret, shame, jealousy, confusion as well as agreements, disagreements, and connections. His Three Daughters takes all those concepts and forms them into one life-changing and complex scenario. It does so with a flow of writing that is faithful to human feelings. His Three Daughters is a narrative that knows how to keep its focus—keeping the three sistersworking together despite their differences with the patterns shifting and spiraling authentically. Carrie Coon delivers many of the long speeches in the dramatic scenes. I have seen Coon in Steppenwolf Theatre productions in Chicago. Coon’s performance in His Three Daughters brings out her determined and theatrical presence to the finest level. Natasha Lyonne plays a role common to her quirkiness in The American Pie franchise. Lyonne though, shifts this one to have silly sides within her, while dealing with a serious situation. Then there is Elizabeth Olsen.  We are used to seeing her in Marvel films, but her breadth of roles has gotten more serious and fulfilling. After her performance in the HBO Miniseries, Love & Death, her monotone personality has shifted thought patterns in an exhilarating matter.

In His Three Daughters, Coon is Katie, Lyonne is Rachel, and Olsen is Christina. They are three sisters who are trying to be with their father at his home in New York to aid him until he passes. This is not an easy task, and one where tolerance and many moving parts are mentally taxing. Katie is the sister that is eager and setting all the blocks up to honor her father after his death. Rachel has always been in their father’s home and provided a lot for him before his health got worse. With Christina, she is just there to make each moment for their father comfortable. Their father is Vincent (played by Jay O’Sanders). The dynamics of the sisters take all kinds of paths. Rachel smokes weed and gambles continuously, Katie keeps being provoked by Rachel’s poor etiquette, and Christina is just trying to see things through properly. His Three Daughters is a revelation of how families can feel in the times where they are about to lose someone. Mindfulness flows through this film, with constant reminders of how the complexity of death lingers.

The sisters living in this limbo create the depth and perception of presence through the writing in His Three Daughters. The film rumbles like a dramatic stage production as the characters sit in unstable circumstances. The shaky feelings are a lot to take in mentally in the film and it’s seen in every conversation. This is where the writing blows its audience out of the water.  The truth is hard to hear—especially when it is around the subject of who has been more responsible or who is winning in the race of loyalty.

Audacious is the adjective that came to mind in the representation of His Three Daughters. It is  vivid in the way of being an open book. Writer and director Azazel Jacobs knows how to make dynamics of conflict have an intense sense of hurt and hatred. He also knows how to move it around and bring in acceptance.  Acceptance is not easy in His Three Daughters, but it does come around with connection in coming together. Three-and-a-half out of four stars.