‘Father Mother Sister Brother’ Review: Jim Jarmusch’s Family Triptych

Jim Jarmusch has been doing his idiosyncratic thing for so long we sometimes take him for granted. But then he comes along with a film as delicate and lovely, as singular and perfectly realized as Father Mother Sister Brother and quietly floors you.

What a pleasure to see a study of family relationships so entirely unconcerned with banal platitudes, emotional calculation or trite “relatability,” that most hackneyed of perceived attributes. This is not bland comfort food. Instead, what makes the triptych of thematically connected snapshots memorable is its deftly unfussy observation of the unknowability that can endure among people who share the same bloodlines.

The director is working here in a similar vein to 2016’s Paterson, his meditative portrait of the quotidian pleasures, the dips and simple corrective comforts in the life of a New Jersey bus driver and spare-time poet, played with disarming candor by Adam Driver. In both films, Jarmusch strips away the ironic detachment and deadpan drollery that were part of his signature in the earlier movies that earned him a prominent spot on the American indie map.

Not to diminish the value of those films, but there’s a maturity here, a wisdom and compassion that seem specific to the late-career work of an artist now comfortably settled into a more thoughtful time of life. Jarmusch at this point appears to have nothing to prove, but plenty left to say.

Humor is still very much a part of his screen vernacular, but it’s gentle, almost casually observational, and even at its most acerbic, never judgy or cooler-than-thou. Even the beautiful, mellow hipsters in the closing story set in Paris are soulful twin siblings who communicate with sensitivity and understated depth of feeling. In a different movie, skateboarders might serve to add a street edge; here they glide in and out of each segment functioning for a minute or two like balletic punctuation, their movement often poeticized in hypnotic slo-mo. Driving interludes are another binding motif.

Jarmusch casts Driver for the third consecutive time (following Paterson and The Dead Don’t Die), though the actor, like Cate Blanchett and others, is recruited to be part of an egalitarian ensemble. There are no star turns, no parts that are discernibly meatier, no actor without a fully dimensional character to play, irrespective of their screen time.

Marked by chapter breaks in which flecks of light shimmer over watery surfaces, accompanied by the silky wisps of a score by Jarmusch and British musician Anikka Henderson (who records as Anika), the film’s three distinct stories about different families are each graced by playful echoes of the other two.

It opens with Father, in which a brother and sister, Jeff (Driver) and Emily (Mayim Bialik), whose rapport is too stiff and guarded to suggest closeness, drive along snow-rimmed roads to a remote but pretty spot in the American Northeast to visit their eccentric dad (the irreplaceable Tom Waits). Given the infrequency of her contact with him, Emily wonders how he survives, while the more dutiful Jeff appears at least somewhat informed. He reveals that he helped out financially with a sewage disaster and again with a collapsed roof, gestures that Emily registers with an arched eyebrow.

The uncomfortableness when they arrive and make small talk over glasses of water and cups of tea — both beverages get an inordinate amount of discussion time, underscoring how little they have to talk about — is compounded by subtle signs of competition between the siblings. The flickers of annoyance on Emily’s face as Jeff talks their dad through the box of fancy groceries he brought, or when he shoves some cash into the old man’s hand as they leave are priceless.

As in each of the stories, the lives of these characters outside of their chapter, while seldom spoken of in any revealing way, are amply readable. The sly hints that their seemingly doddery father might be bilking them for money and sympathy in no way lessen the hilarious disclosures once he’s alone again.

The second part, Mother, features Charlotte Rampling as a chilly English author living in Dublin, where her daughters — prim Timothea (Blanchett) and pink-haired wild child Lilith (Vicky Krieps) — have moved to be closer to her and yet see her once a year for afternoon tea. A phone session with her therapist before they arrive suggests this is an annual appointment she could live without.

The sisters arrive from different parts of the city, Tim, as she’s called, after some car trouble and Lilith in a vehicle driven by her good-humored Irish girlfriend Jeanette (Sarah Greene). Knowing her mother will be watching from the front window, Lilith insists on getting in the back for the final block or two so she can pass Jeanette off as an Uber driver. The updates she gives her mother on her personal life might have fragments of truth or be total fabrications.

The chapter plays out almost like an extended scene out of a Mike Leigh film. Tim is diplomatic, attempting to keep the afternoon light and relaxed, while Lilith seems to relish the role of the black sheep, enjoying her mother’s mostly tacit disapproval.

Cinematographer Yorick Le Saux, who shot Only Lovers Left Alive for Jarmusch, along with some exquisite work for Olivier Assayas, filmed the Dublin and Paris segs while the great Frederick Elmes, a longtime Jarmusch collaborator, shot Father. Le Saux drops in one of several purposefully framed overhead shots, a kind of still life of the mother’s immaculately prepared table.

A champion of decorous remoteness, Rampling’s character is the very definition of anal, right down to her chic, tightly wrapped burgundy coatdress. When she notices that both of her daughters are wearing similar shades (as were the three characters in Father), she half-jokes, “How embarrassing.” But the gift bags of leftover cakes she hands Tim and Lilith to take home are even more color-coordinated.

The element of mischief introduced by Lilith is delicious. While lifting the very proper English teapot like some museum artifact, Rampling asks, “So, shall I be mother?” Lilith doesn’t miss a beat, responding, “You might as well start sometime,” as a nervous look crosses Tim’s face.

Some business with a large, colorful bunch of flowers Tim brings is both very funny and a precise illustration of her mother’s uptight character, as is the way she flinches when Lilith tosses their coats over the furniture. But the comedy masterstroke is Lilith’s maneuvering to take an Uber home on her mother’s account.

The humor is effortless, never forced, as are the tiny signs of genuine affection beneath the polite awkwardness — the conspiratorial giggles shared by Tim and Lilith while rifling through the novels “Mummy” does not like to discuss with them (with cheesy, mildly torrid titles like Reckless Moonlight, Boundaries of Love and An Unfaithful Tomorrow, extra amusing because they were penned by such an ice queen); or the brief moment when the sisters hold hands while walking down the path after the visit.

The love is more openly expressed in the final part, Sister Brother, by Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat) in his car, over coffee in a bar or in their recently deceased parents’ now emptied Paris apartment. Their body language as much as their quick access to each other’s thoughts point to what they laughingly call the “twin factor.” Skye even correctly guesses how long Billy has been microdosing ‘shrooms, based on his chill demeanor.

The way Skye nestles her head into the crook of her brother’s neck or drapes herself across his legs after an unembarrassed display of grief is ineffably moving. The Paris chapter is laced with this type of expressive physicality, something Jarmusch orchestrates with consummate skill. Just the throwaway moment of Skye stopping Billy as they saunter into a storage facility lined with roller doors and rearranges his glorious fountain of dreads is sublime.

Jarmusch lulls us into thinking this part will be the exception to the theme of virtual estrangement, just through the bond between the twins that seems to return instantly after an unspecified but seemingly considerable amount of time apart. But the increasing evidence of how much they didn’t know about their unconventional parents ties the film together in an elegant full circle. As does Anika’s nonchalant cover of the Dusty Springfield classic, “Spooky,” their mother’s favorite song.

In lesser hands, some of the common elements in the three stories might have seemed too cute — Rolexes that could be genuine or fake; toasts with nontraditional toasting beverages; astrology references; the British idiom “Bob’s your uncle.” But Jarmusch folds everything into the mix with an invisible hand.

This is a unique portrait of families and their foibles, both amusing and annoying, superbly acted by an exceptional cast fully inhabiting their characters. They’re all so good it’s unfair to single out anyone. The movie is touched by warmth and generosity of spirit even when the people onscreen show little of it. And for a three-part piece, it gains a gorgeous fluidity from the gossamer ribbon of melancholy threaded through it. Like Paterson, it’s a film whose simplicity, sweetness and unvarnished ordinariness make it seem almost a miracle.