Warm but never saccharine, writer-director Azazel Jacobs captures the turbulence that grief and loss provoke within families. Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne give masterful performances as sisters who gather together in their father's (Jay O. Sanders) apartment as they wait for his impending death. The drama was released by Netflix nearly a year after its premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. His Three Daughters is a hopeful yet clear-eyed feature that depicts the enduring strength of familial bonds, despite the tiny devastations that come with loving and being loved.

All three actresses are playing to their strengths which results in sincerely convincing performances. Firstborn daughters will find an uncomfortable resemblance to Coon's Katie, who begrudgingly fulfils the duties she believes were inevitably assigned to her by the mandate of birth order. Coon reveals Katie's complexity, letting us see beyond her cross-armed condescension. Olsen's expressions expertly communicate Christina's sweep-it-under-the-rug mentality with hurried smiles and quick mediation. Their stoner stepsister Rachel (husky-voiced Lyonne) is the most subtle but no less impactful, retreating into sports and betting to feel connected to her father.

The film is a chamber piece, confining the trio to the New York apartment. The claustrophobia of their forced proximity increases the frequency of emotional confrontation. Sam Levy's cinematography rarely has the sisters share the screen. Framing them individually during an argument, their segregation reflects their misunderstandings and conflicting views, like a Venn diagram with no overlaps. It's only at the end, sparked by the new-found commonality of grief, that the sisters cuddle on the sofa, their physical closeness mirroring a new tolerance and refreshed love.

In Greta Gerwig's Little Women (2019) the boisterous March sisters impatiently cut each other off mid-sentence without sacrificing comprehension, as their familiarity renders polite verbal queuing inessential. In His Three Daughters, the women's estrangement has negated the mind reading ability that close siblings share, so they all harbour inaccurate assumptions about each other's lives. Finding apples to be the sole occupants of the fridge, Katie criticises Rachel, not knowing it's the only food Vincent could stomach. While the sisters occasionally converse in their secret language, a hangover from childhood, more often their dialogue nears monologue dimensions as they try to make themselves understood. This quirk of Jacobs's screenplay fully submerges the audience in the dynamics of their discordant relationship.

In its 101-minute runtime, His Three Daughters skilfully encapsulates how differently grief can manifest in people; Katie fixates on a Do Not Resuscitate form and Christina comforts her father by singing. Though Jacobs's characters are purely concentrated, they aren't oversimplified. His insightful perspectives hook us with their stinging accuracy and conclude with a heart-warming moral that feels well-earned.

His Three Daughters is out on Netflix now.