His Three Daughters: A Hit and a Miss

This is not Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” or Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters,” yet screenwriter/director Azazel Jacobs takes on themes dealt with in those two masterpieces of Russian literature. Does Jacobs succeed? No, but he does employ the talents of three extraordinary actors.

Set in a Lower-Eastside Manhattan apartment, “His Three Daughters” deals with three sisters holding a kind of vigil as they witness their father, who is expiring in his bedroom at home. He receives regular visits from an informed and capable Hospice worker, Angel (Rudy Galiana). Two of the daughters, Katie (Carrie Coon) and Christina (Elizabeth Olsen), share the
same mother, but Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), who lives in the apartment with her father, is his daughter from another marriage.

Katie, verbally and intensely, is heard from first as she tries to organize a situation that is really beyond her control. Christina, who has flown in from California, has strong opinions but is more diplomatic and acquiesces to Katie, who has seen more of her father because she lives
locally in the city. Then there is Rachel with her flaming red hair and her established habit of smoking pot, even when she has to sit outside to indulge the habit. Her scenes lighting up outside on a park bench bring us one of the few male characters in the film, a security officer who reminds her that she is breaking the city’s law but who then chooses to look the other way.

As a genre, “His Three Daughters” could be classified as a tragicomedy, and with its limited set, would probably work just as well on the stage as in a film. Director Jacobs took his movie to last year’s Toronto International Film Festival, where it received positive attention and was acquired by Netflix, where it is now streaming.