‘Father Mother Sister Brother’ review: Family tensions, subtly wrought

The holidays bring good spirits—an opportunity for reflection, but also, most likely, family anxiety. Jim JarmuschThe latest film is not set in this season, although the faint flashes of awkwardness, resentment and guilt that cross the characters' faces may be painfully familiar to viewers who have difficult relationships with their parents. “Father, Mother, Sister, Brother” is here to offer sympathy, but as the independent film veteran remains a keen chronicler of everyday life, he has no patience for sentimentality or cookie-cutter solutions. The film flows so casually that you may be stunned by how moved you are by the end.

“Father, Mother, Sister, Brother” is divided into three chapters, each of which is dedicated to a different family. In the first segment, set somewhere in the Northeast, siblings Jeff (Adam Driver) and Emily (Mayim Bialik) visit their unnamed father (Tom Waits). The second story moves to Dublin, where sisters Timothea (Cate Blanchett) and Lilith (Vicky Krieps) arrive at their mother's (Charlotte Rampling) home for their annual tea party. And in the final chapter, twins Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat) reunite in Paris to close on the apartment owned by their parents, who recently died in a plane crash.

Jarmusch occasionally broke his narratives into parts: his films “Night on Earth” And “Coffee and cigarettes” were anthologies interconnected conceptually. Father, Mother, Sister, Brother seems similar at first, but the film, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, has a cumulative strength that reveals subtle but deep thematic subtext.

The first clue is in the chapter “The Father”, which begins with Jeff and Emily sitting in a car. The conversation becomes stilted when they discuss their eccentric, mysterious father. The visit is heavy duty – they don't see Dad very often – and when he awkwardly welcomes them into his ramshackle house, there's a significant pause and pursed lips. Not much happens until the episode's finale, when there's a twist that points out the yawning chasm between what we think we know about our parents and what the truth about their lives is.

Once we get to “Mother,” we begin to acclimatize to the film's disorienting rhythms—which is a good thing, considering Timothea and Lilith's relationship with their mother is, if anything, even colder. Their mother's polite, overly formal demeanor cannot hide her confusion about how to handle her children. Dressed in an unflattering hairstyle and glasses, Blanchett plays Timothea as extremely timid, still craving the approval of her estranged mother. By comparison, Cripps' Lilith is more assertive, proudly showing off her pink-dyed hair and showing off a Lexus she doesn't actually own. Rampling impresses as a matriarch who can smell the lies and insecurities of her children but has the good manners of not saying anything. Or maybe it's not kindness at all, but rather a way of convincing yourself that it will always prevail.

The film's persistent fragility may make some viewers uneasy. That's partly the point, but hopefully they'll soon be carried away by the film's melancholic undertones. Working from a minimalist keyboard score he co-wrote, Jarmusch fills the silence with unspeakable despair. You can feel it in the way Emily looks out of her father's window at the lake beyond: a wintry scene that is both tranquil and poignant. You feel it when Timothea quietly examines herself in the bathroom mirror, wishing her life was bigger than it is.

Moments like these can make you cry. But Jarmusch's deadpan approach often follows this sadness with a wry laugh in moments of unfiltered honesty. Krieps delights in portraying her character as a fast-talking fake hoping to surprise her mother and sister. (At one point, Lilith announces, “I hate to say it, but my life has been like a dream.” Blanchett's reaction is delightful.) Ultimately, we learn to look past Jarmusch's deceptively mundane surface to see the dangerous, unresolved issues within these guarded families. Characters reveal their true selves from time to time, and then just as quickly retreat, afraid to touch on the real conflict.

This brings “Father, Mother, Sister, Brother” to its most impressive episode. It would be a spoiler to reveal anything about Skye and Billy's intimate saga, but it's clear that Jarmusch structured the parts of “The Father” and “The Mother” in such a way that the final part of “Sister and Brother” sounds different. Equally important, Moore and Sabbat's fine performances cleverly reshape our impressions of the previous chapters, bringing us closer to some of the most tender moments of Jarmusch's career.

Jarmusch turned 73 in January, and he has lost neither his edge nor his uncanny composure, but only the depth of feeling in recent works, such as the 2016 work. “Paterson” here becomes a bittersweet reflection on the agony of trying to uncover the secret of our aging parents. In Father, Mother, Sister, Brother, family can be hell, but the only thing worse is that they are no longer with us.