Father Mother Sister Brother offers three movies for the price of one. The first is set on a frosty lakeside in the home of a man (Tom Waits) who’s visited by another (Adam Driver). The second pulls up in a leafy Dublin suburb where Charlotte Rampling plays mother to Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps. It’s written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, perhaps the only director in the world who could arrange that constellation of stars and have them speak in small talk over cups of tea. That he’s still interested in doing so should not be undervalued.
The director is, of course, no stranger to the anthology format: Mystery Train, Night on Earth, and Coffee and Cigarettes are some of the best examples of the unloved format. If the first two segments here were filmed in black-and-white, they could have slipped into Coffee without too much fuss. Nobody smokes in them, naturally, but the humor is relatively similar and the drinks, while tea, are at least served in cups. Of the three vignettes, I’m fondest of the middle story in which Krieps plays Lilith, the free-spirited sister of Blanchett’s buttoned-up Timothea, a public servant who has just landed a job at the heritage society. Seeing the two actresses spar while Rampling inquisitively watches on is probably worth the entry.
Outside of that, there are things to appreciate, if not love. The first segment has an energy somewhere downstream of Samuel Beckett, with Waits playing the rakish dad of Jeff (Driver) and Emily (Mayim Bialik)––straight-laced siblings who are paying him an annual visit. In the last, Jarmusch moves to an autumnal Paris where a set of twins, Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat), have recently lost their remaining parent and come to the flat they grew up for one last visit. (For the brief role of the landlady, Jarmusch casts veteran actress Françoise Lebrun, and with her the strange echo of the empty flat at the end of Vortex.) Linking all of these are a series of recurring jokes: a battered Rolex, the question of whether something other than alcohol can be toasted with, the phrase “Bob’s your uncle,” and so on. Each also begins with a bit of driving and a bit of music. It’s no Perfect Days, but it’s not a million miles off.
Artistically unencumbered, with nothing left to prove and prone to the occasional dad joke, The Dead Don’t Die and Father Mother Sister Brother both confirm that Jarmusch, like Wenders, has entered his late-style era. This is a movie that exists for the sake of existing, art for the sake of art: the kind of thing that doesn’t need your attention and isn’t particularly eager to offer a huge amount in return. If you were a fan of the bright colors and clean emotional sentiment of Pedro Almodóvar’s recent The Room Next Door, you might ease into its rhythms, but Father Mother Sister Brother can boast neither that movie’s style nor Almodóvar’s eye for aching melodrama.
Jarmusch’s idea of cool is less timeless than the Spaniard’s, but late style isn’t really about all that. Those who love the earlier work will allow the artist to riff with ideas they might not have the time or resources to fully realize––essentially giving the benefit of the doubt, or “imaginative sympathy,” as Richard Brody once described it. “Lateness,” Edward Said wrote, “is being fully conscious, full of memory.” Father Mother Sister Brother might make some cringe, but it fits the criteria. I’m happy it exists.
Father Mother Sister Brother premiered at the Venice Film Festival and will be released on December 24.