Father Mother Sister Brother: Family on Stage [eng]

TITLE: Father Mother Sister Brother / DIRECTOR & SCREENWRITER: Jim Jarmusch / CAST: Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Luka Sabbat, Indya Moore… / DURATION: 110’ / COUNTRY: United States, France, Ireland, Italy, Germany / YEAR: 2025

Father Mother Sister Brother, the Golden Lion winner at this year’s Venice Film Festival, is another anthology film exploring the beauty and eccentricity of human beings directed by Jim Jarmusch. We are presented with three distinct stories that ultimately interweave: a brother and sister visiting their potentially ailing father in his rural Northeastern US home, two sisters in Dublin on their annual stopover for tea at their mother’s suburban house, and a pair of twins reunited in their late parents’ Parisian apartment after their passing. As these stories unfold and inevitably echo one another, Jarmusch, with the help of a stellar ensemble cast, paints a fascinating landscape of modern family dynamics.

At its core, Father Mother Sister Brother feels less like a film than a theater play. Each of the three stories progresses largely over the course of a couple of hours, mostly within two restricted settings: a car ride and the parents’ house. From there, characters evolve and interact in a confined space, much as they would on a stage. Adam Driver, Tom Waits, and Mayim Bialik play a game of musical chairs in the living room of the countryside home, switching frantically between a reclining chair and a designer sofa. Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, and Vicky Krieps interact around their lunch table through a subtle dance of teapots and plates of sponge cakes. Luka Sabbat and Indya Moore shadow each other across the hallways and mirror reflections of their parents’ empty Paris apartment. If these confined rooms are theater stages, the characters themselves are actors, playing a carefully constructed role within their own scene; Waits is a father who lies to his kids to solicit pity, while Rampling is a mother being lied to by her daughters in a desperate attempt to impress her. This resemblance to theater is nothing new for Jarmusch, and we find here quite a few recurrent features of his cinema. The dialogue-based apartment scenes mimic the format of Coffee and Cigarettes (2003), and the repeated car rides that mark the entry into each story clearly recall Night on Earth (1991).

Jarmusch inherently remains a cool kid of the big screen, infusing his film with an edgy spirit and a soothing heart. This duality is key. Beyond his usual wry sense of humor, we are treated to mellow electric guitar riffs between the chapters (composed and performed by Jarmush himself and collaborator Anika), while groups of skateboarders effortlessly drift through the three stories and characters casually debate the benefits of microdosing in constantly stylish wardrobes (a clear benefit of YSL Beauty production involvement). Yet, counterbalancing this urban edge, the atmosphere sustains a remarkable calming rhythm and visual poetry of meticulously composed frames, bathed in nostalgic late-autumn/early-winter light. Listening to the characters awkwardly meander through trivialities and silences creates a comforting rhythm, which finds its perfect culmination in a touching cover of Nico’s These Days over the closing credits.

Behind the apparent simplicity and ordinariness of the narrative, Jarmusch offers a poignant reflection on the notion of family ties through time and distance. The third chapter bittersweetly echoes the first two. While the film opens with children reluctantly visiting their older parents, navigating banal discussions and on the lookout for exit doors, the final chapter shows us what is bound to happen once those parents vanish. The children inevitably come back to this house they were so eager to avoid and desperately scan through the memories and remnants of life, only to realize how little they truly knew about the ones who raised them. Father Mother Sister Brother becomes a sensitive examination of human nature and a reminder to visit our mothers, call our fathers and cherish the time we still have together.

Film still: © Vague Notion photo by Yorick Le Saux (MegaCom Film Promo).