His Three Daughters review: Extraordinary showcase for Carrie Coon, Natasha Lyonne and Elizabeth Olsen

It is one of the conundrums of the streaming age of how you release a smaller movie that doesn’t have any car chases, explosions or CGI battle sequences.

It doesn’t “need” a cinema release in the sense that it has a sound design or visual effects that demand a big screen and loud speakers. But it deserves one anyway even if a “talky” movie such as His Three Daughters will inevitably find a larger audience on streaming than it ever would have with a limited cinema run.

The scale of His Three Daughters lies not in its craft feats but in its performances, which are towering. Everything hits better in the immersive environment of a cinema. A home entertainment experience diminishes that emotional punch.

His Three Daughters is a phenomenal movie and it really is such a shame it won’t be able to unleash its full power. But you should definitely seek it out when it hits Netflix this Friday because even a small-screen version of this movie is better than 95 per cent of what is playing in theatres.

Directed by Azazel Jacobs (French Exit), the movie stars Natasha Lyonne, Carrie Coon and Elizabeth Olsen as three mostly estranged sisters.

Rachel (Lyonne) has lived with their dad Vincent (Jay O. Sanders) in their rent-controlled New York City apartment for years as his health deteriorated. She is the one that has been taking care of him.

Vincent’s cancer has progressed and he is now in hospice care at home where his other two daughters, Katie (Coon) and Christina (Olsen), have gathered. The idea is that all three sisters will see out Vincent’s final days together, taking shifts to sit with him and to be there together at the moment of his death.

Their relationships are fractured, particularly between Katie and Rachel. Katie judges Rachel for what she perceives as a responsibility-free lifestyle, passive-aggressively/aggressively nitpicking at small details like having only red apples in the fridge.

Christina is in the middle, uncomfortable with confrontation and trying to play peacekeeper but it’s also obvious that she has her own tensions that she’s not expressing.

The back-and-forth play between the three characters in this emotionally heightened moment in their lives is like a world-class tennis match. They’re not intentionally trying to hurt each other but they do, as their own pain manifests and they lash out.

There are so many resentments that trickle and flood over the course of the days trapped in this small space, the precision of these performances from Coon, Lyonne and Olsen taps into the deep history of what connects their characters.

Jacobs, who also wrote the screenplay, masterfully allows his characters to reveal themselves piece by piece, even though from the first jump, we have a strong grasp of their interior lives.

His Three Daughters is a performance piece, giving room to three talented actors to show you exactly what they can do — and they are enthralling.

It’s the kind of film that affirms that thorniness doesn’t have to be the one defining factor of uneasy family relationships, that there is redemption in them too.

Rating: 4.5/5

His Three Daughters is on Netflix from September 20