Review of His Three Daughters, directed by Azazel Jacobs

If you’re new here and stumbled upon this blog through the magical powers of the Internet: welcome! My name is Ashley, and I worked as a film critic, am an author myself, and I just generally love reading, writing, and watching all forms of art.

This blog is where I document all of the content I’ve been watching, reading, and consuming throughout my life. I’m knee deep in the world of the arts professionally, so it only made sense that I keep a digital diary to keep up with all of the weird, wacky adventures I’ve been on.

Anyways, I had a period of funemployment after an opportunity I was told and reassured I had fell through. Normally I would have been devastated at the lack of a financial windfall created by this, but at the time same time I was ready to give up on the agonizing wait and had enough money to focus on my blog for a bit.

So I did! I watched a ton of movies, read a lot, and wrote quite a few poems during this time. I wanted to take a break because I wasn’t sure when I would ever take one again, especially as I’m approaching the age where we need to get jobs in order to survive in the world.

His Three Daughters I watched as soon as it came out, although this review is coming out much later. I didn’t have the sense to post this when it came out due to the sheer amount of backlog I had to get through recently, which was a mistake because we should always be prompt about our content.

Many months later, here’s my review and summary of the movie! I was indeed dedicated to getting this out eventually.

Three daughters quarrel as their father lays dying in a couple of rooms down the hall.

In this movie, three siblings converge in their father’s apartment. He is dying from cancer, and decided he is going to enter hospice in the apartment that he owns. His three daughters are Katie, Rachel, and Christina, and each of them has drastically different personalities and lives. Katie drags Rachel for the fact she smokes her weed in the apartment, although rachel says their father, Vincent, did not care about it.

Katie is also mad that Rachel didn’t have him sign a DNR order while he was still able to, as well as the fact there isn’t anything in their fridge except a bunch of apples. A hospice worker stops by and tells them their father could go any minute, and Katie finds herself unable to write an obituary.

Rachel refuses to go into the room Vincent is in during the mean time, but another point of conflict comes up when Katie and Christina realize that Rachel is going to take over the lease on the apartment. Katie accuses her of waiting for him to die so she could take the apartment for herself.

After a small incident where they think Vincent is dying, Rachel brings her boyfriend, Benjy, into the home. He openly remarks on how her sisters treat her poorly, and that Katie, who doesn’t live that far away in Brooklyn, never bothered to come and help their father during all of this time.

When Katie is rude to him and Rachel, he shuts them down. He tells Katie off by telling him that only Rachel was here for their father when he was falling apart, cutting up apples because that was all he could ever eat. He also tells them he was a friend of Vincent’s and that they knew each other quite well, which was something Katie would have known if she paid attention the last time she came around.

Rachel doesn’t take Katie’s apology, and Christina, getting in the middle of their fight, screams that she hates them. She then apologizes, but Katie, still being snarky, only apologizes for the apples and misunderstanding them. Rachel says she was only planning to live here until Vincent is gone, which leads to another tough conversation when Katie implies that Rachel isn’t his real daughter.

Turns out she isn’t actually, but she sees him as the father she never had. Eventually, the sisters do make up, and Rachel gathers the courage to go into Vincent’s room. When she does that, Katie says that Rachel should get the apartment in the end and stay there.

When the three enter the room together, Vincent stands up, takes off all of his medical equipment, and takes them into the living room. He then gives a speech about living and dying, especially in New York, and they are so happy to see him up and about.

But turns out he was actually dead, as he went into his chair and died after sitting down. The girls take turns in the chair, sitting there, and have a moment together. Katie and Christina eventually say goodbye, leaving Rachel the lease owner, but she at least smokes her weed outside now.

Overall Thoughts

This is a movie where its strengths lie in the acting performances; it felt like a stage play, especially considering it takes place over the course of a few days and in one setting: the apartment that Vincent and Rachel live inside of him.

Each of the three actresses does an excellent job with the material, which is what made the film. Without them doing great in it, the material would be very flat and not theatric, making this quite the boring movie.

Overall, I was impressed with it. I don’t have a ton to say because of how this is a pretty simple movie. And that might not be what some others are looking for, but I was fine with it at the end of the day.

Go and watch this if you haven’t already; there’s a lot to admire in this movie.

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