Father Mother Sister Brother
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Cert: 12A
Genre: Dramedy
Starring: Starring Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Sarah Greene, Indya Moore, Luka Sabbat
Running Time: 1 hr 51 mins
At 73, Jim Jarmusch remains committed to his own brand of drollery. With Father Mother Sister Brother, an anthology of three loosely connected family dramas, he doubles down on the quiet minimalism that has characterised his work since Stranger Than Paradise. Not atypically for a portmanteau picture, this surprise winner from last year’s Venice film festival is intermittently arresting and wildly uneven.
An opening gambit, in which two siblings visit their estranged father, is the strongest chapter and clearly flags the theme of families ageing apart. Returning Jarmusch players Tom Waits and Adam Driver know their way around the director’s deadpan and restraint: glances, pauses and the weight of what goes unsaid unpack familial fractures with comic precision. The performances are finely tuned, sneakily funny and the silences earned.
The coming-together of estranged or distant relatives is a beat in a refrain. Subsequent chapters borrow and rework phrases (“Bob’s your uncle”), camera shots (notably, an overhead survey of tea) and awkward small talk with varying success.
Sadly, the middle section, set in Dublin, is the project’s nadir. The city, alas, is as miscast as the formidable ensemble. The scenario – a very British afternoon tea between Charlotte Rampling’s mother and her two daughters in Dublin 7 (?) – never develops beyond suggestion. Cate Blanchett (supposedly frumpy) and Vicky Krieps (supposedly punkish) are all wrong and too try-hard for their sketchily outlined characters. A meta-joke concerning Krieps’s anachronistic accent fails to land. Never mind the Luxembourgish brogue: everyone sounds off-key here. Worse, none of the players come close to mastering Jarmusch’s signature laconicism.
A final, tender segment concerns orphaned adult twins (Pose’s Indya Moore and Grownish’s Luka Sabbat) reunited in Paris and sifting through their late parents’ effects. Their strolling, driving and easy chatter recapture something of the meandering humanity of the director’s Night on Earth. It’s a sweet coda for a minor entry in the filmmaker’s impressive canon.
In cinemas from Friday, April 10th