Her Three Daughters: Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne Are Great in This Netflix Drama (Review)

Three estranged sisters watch over their dying father. A perfectly executed closed-door drama, carried by Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne.

In a room at the end of the hallway of a no-frills New York apartment, a father is dying of cancer. The only proof of his existence for the viewer is the regular beeps emitted by the machines when one of his daughters opens the door. There are three of them, more or less consciously avoiding each other until now, but now they are forced to live together until the father, asleep from morphine, takes his last breath: Katie, the irritable big sister (Carrie Coon); Christina (Elizabeth Olsen), whose apparent zenitude seems to hide a nervous breakdown; Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), a heavy pot smoker who has never left the apartment and lives off sports betting.

Border to Purgatory

This quasi-closed-doors drama could quickly resemble filmed theatre if Azazel Jacobs (The Lovers, French Exit) did not use the apartment as a cinematic territory, playing on the framing to invent a sort of two-room/kitchen western where metaphorical guns are pulled out between the bathroom and the living room. The trio argues, reconciles, argues again while throwing ancestral grudges at each other (delicious dialogues) and takes turns in the famous bedroom, always off-screen, whose door takes on the air of a border to purgatory. The father is invisible but occupies all the mental space of these three impeccably drawn and embodied characters. Until his figure suddenly emerges in a phantasmagorical scene that is worth the detour in itself.

His Three Daughters, by Azazel Jacobs, with Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, Carrie Coon… Duration: 1 h 43. On Netflix on September 20, 2024.