M, 111 minutes
3 Stars
Review by © Jane Freebury
In this film about families from an eminent mainstay of the indie genre, some of the key scenes take place in a moving vehicle. While it isn’t exactly a road movie, things happen en route as the characters travel to meet up with their close relatives, then hasten back to their cars to put a bit of distance between themselves and the uneasy encounter.
Three distinct, elegantly mounted stories are introduced by intertitles, and strung together stylistically and thematically. Father, Mother Sister Brother is set in different locations in the Western world. If we find ourselves tempted to make something of similar fashion choices or the way in which table settings with coffee or afternoon tea are filmed from an overhead camera, it is clear that the point lurks below surface appearances.
First, we find Jeff (Adam Driver) and Emily (Mayim Bialik) driving through snow-bound countryside in America to see their father. This rascally character, inhabited by Tom Waits, is getting ready for his guests by cluttering his pleasant lakeside home to make it look shabby, conforming to their expectations. He doesn’t have social security, right? Long-term Jarmusch collaborator and friend, Waits who is well-known as a musician-singer-composer in his own right, revels of course in the role of the shambolic patriarch. His music and performance are an acquired taste. He sounds just as he sounds in his songs, as a hapless, inebriated songster.
Gently amusing and uneventful encounters are stylish with minimal drama
For much of the trip we are perched on the bonnet while they sit side-by-side facing the screen, at a quirky angle like direct address. The cross-cutting between scenes of the siblings in earnest conversation, concerned for their father living alone in a remote area is contrasted with his scampering figure, busy creating the wrong impression. Ultimately, the encounter is uneventful and gently amusing. Anything but cathartic. Brother and sister depart grateful that responsibility for such a difficult elderly guy doesn’t fall directly on either of them.
Meanwhile, over the ocean in Dublin, Ireland, a mother (Charlotte Rampling) gets afternoon tea ready for a visit from her daughters. Lilith (Vicky Krieps) arrives first, in a way that sets up a ruse to suggest that she can afford to take an Uber. While Timothea (Cate Blanchett, nearly unrecognisable in pixie haircut and black rimmed glasses) must call for roadside assistance along the way after experiencing mechanical difficulties. She only just makes it. The individual sisters are as different as chalk and cheese. It’s another strained and formal family get-together, with Rampling’s graceful figure presiding over an impeccably set table set with macarons and cut sandwiches.
Fashion choices are cheery and diverting in a conflict-free zone
The three female actors are quite wonderful together. Rampling as the stern matriarch, sparing with her affection, Blanchett and Krieps gorgeously convincing in their small, contrasting roles.
The third and concluding narrative is about young twin siblings, Billy (Luka Sabbat) and Skye (Indya Moore), also estranged, who have met up in Paris to sort out the affairs of their recently, and suddenly, deceased parents. The visit to their parents’ empty apartment underlines their mutual loss, in the most emotional encounter of the triptych.
While eschewing the deeper motivations and explanations for the emotional gulf between the characters, the writer-director is never far from being playful, deflecting our curiosity about family histories and personal motivations with superficial discussion. The topic of conversation might include the safety and taste of drinking water, whether luxury wristwatches are fake or genuine, or shared tastes in clothes. The red and pink fashion choices, even among the males of the species, are cheery and diverting. We are in a conflict-free zone here.
Much of the dramatic interaction takes shape against a soundtrack that includes some of the latest idiosyncratic work from filmmaker and musician Jarmusch. However, each story is marked by a key moment when the characters on the road find themselves sharing it alongside young skateboarders. It captures the skaters’ freedom, fluidity and grace.
We have certainly seen lone star filmmaker Jarmusch and his family of collaborators with Down by Law, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Paterson and any number of other films, achieve rapturously creative results over the decades. Father Mother Sister Brother is also charming and engaging, but it asks little of the great actors in small roles and is ever so minimal.
Published in the Canberra Times on 2 April 2026, and on Rotten Tomatoes