Father Mother Sister Brother
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Writer: Jim Jarmusch
Cast: Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Sarah Greene, Indya Moore, Luka Sabbat, Françoise Lebrun
Seen on: 21.3.2026

Plot:
A father (Tom Waits) expects his two children Jeff (Adam Driver) and Emily (Mayim Bialik) for a long overdue visit. A mother (Charlotte Rampling) prepares for her yearly tea with her two daughters, Timothea (Cate Blanchett) and Lilith (Vicky Krieps). And twins Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat) come together again after the death of their parents. Three different families, three different ways of being distant from each other.

Two of the three episodes that make up Father Mother Sister Brother worked very well for me, while the third was not bad but felt out of place somewhat. Nevertheless, I enjoyed most of the film, though it should have been a little shorter.

The first two segments of the film – Father and Mother – share a lot. Adult children coming to visit a parent that they haven’t seen in a while, and who also haven’t seen each other in a long time. As they carefully try to connect, many attempts fail because relationships need the boring every day stuff to really live. In the case of families, there is a special awkwardness because so much every day stuff used to be shared, so you are intimately familiar, and not at all familiar anymore at the same time.

The cast in both segments do stellar work, making them studies in awkwardness and discomfort. Every once in a while, a warm moment shines through, mostly in the sibling interactiosn, but it’s rare. Sometimes things are pretty funny for the audience – like when the father painstakingly prepares his pristine apartment by hiding the expensive furniture under old blankets and cluttering things up, making himself seem tawdry and poor. But for the characters, it is actually not that funny, adding another layer of disconnect between characters and audience that mirrors the disconnect between the characters.

The third segment seems to clash with the other two. While it, too, has two siblings that are somewhat distant from their parents as they are learning stuff about them through the things they left behind. But Skye and Billy are never awkward with each other. They may not have seen each other for a while, yet they are completely comfortable with each other, share their own rhythm (beautifully captured by Moore and Sabbat). That they’re twins seems to suggest that – at least in Jarmusch’s point of view – they are so close that nothing can bring them apart, neither temporal nor local distance. But as a person with siblings, my experience is much closer to that despite no twin in sight.

Given that the movie does have some lengths and not a short runtime, and considering the odd contraposition of Sister Brother, I probably would have preferred it, if it had been its own thing entirely. But say what you will about the film, it makes you want to consider it, to think it over and examine it and its characters more closely. And it has simply beautiful acting – I have liked things for less.

Summarizing: not the best Jarmusch ever made, but not the best from him is still pretty damn good.