Father Mother Sister Brother review – an astute, open-hearted microcosm

Jim Jarmusch’s latest film shifts seamlessly from its opening logos to its first self-owned visual. Strands and particles of light drift by in an empty frame, twinkling like dust in front of an active film projector. As they continue to glimmer and flicker, we become aware that we are moving – skylines and telephone poles glimpsed faintly through a window. The image fades away again. It’s a sequence that evokes a specific and surreal childhood memory – of sitting in your parents’ car late at night at the tail-end of a long ride, your eyes seemingly shut – every now and then stealing a half-open glance at where you are in your journey. When you feel the car lurch to a halt, you slump back in your seat motionless and pretend to be asleep. Your parents carry you inside. You’re getting heavier by the day.

Cars are a pertinent and poignant space in the filmography of indie auteur Jarmusch. They transport people from one context to another. Inside the vehicle, these people are individuals. When they arrive at their destinations, they’ll each have to reconfigure their identities within a new context – or an old one. Jarmusch’s 1991 anthology Night on Earth explored five such journeys across five major cities. His new film, the Golden Lion-winning Father Mother Sister Brother, continues the earlier film’s preoccupations, presenting multiple vignettes and multiple car rides. This time, however, Jarmusch is more concerned with what happens when we step outside of the car, and back into our parents’ homes.

The title divides into a triptych of vignettes: Father, Mother and Sister Brother. In the first, adult siblings Jeff (Adam Driver) and Em (Mayim Bialik) drive into the hinterlands of New Jersey to visit their isolated father (Tom Waits). Recently divorced, Jeff is muted and serious. Driver is a perfect match, playing him with a straight back and a permanent lump in his throat. Em is straight-talking and sardonic, Bialik injecting a spark that exposes the unnatural nature of the subsequent meeting. Their father scurries clumsily about preparing for their arrival. Waits pares back his usual gravelly tone, instead reflecting our own relatives back at us.

Clothing is central here – the fashion house Saint Laurent produces. At the front door, the three discover that they’re all wearing the same shade of burgundy – Em as her outer layer, Jeff beneath a coat – the father too, albeit buried beneath many layers. He’s been struggling with money for essentials, apparently. Guided by a strong sense of obligation, Jeff has been helping him out. Em has heard nothing of this and is less convinced. After all, their father seems to be doing all right – and is that a Rolex on his wrist?

The visit is short. They note the changes in each other’s lives like a checklist and soon run out of things to talk about. Away from the suffocation and stiltedness, Jeff and Em debrief in the car. Alone again, the father unwinds too, revealing a different picture of his life. For much of this opening gambit, we’re as lost as to the siblings’ contexts as we are to the father’s, and its conclusion leaves more questions than answers. But perhaps fostering a feeling of incompleteness at first is precisely the point – Jarmusch’s film thrives in acknowledging the ultimate unknowability of our parents.

The structure repeats in the film’s second vignette, this time with greater clarity. In Dublin, a mother (Charlotte Rampling) is awaiting the arrival of her two adult children: Timothea (Cate Blanchett) and Lilith (Vicky Krieps). They live in the same city but only convene once annually, for afternoon tea. As they take their seats at the dining table, we’re introduced to further modes of familial performance. The mother is politely inquisitive, but more observant than she lets on. The pink-haired, secretly queer Lilith has carefully rehearsed which parts of her life to reveal and which to keep hidden. Krieps weaponises a control similar to that seen in her role in Phantom Thread, broadcasting the impression of being looser in her demeanour than she truly is. Rampling looks at her with a deep gaze – steely yet loving – that speaks volumes that will never be uttered aloud. Neurotic and jumpy, Blanchett is similarly transformed, cowering instinctually behind her smaller, more comfortably rebellious sister when discovered snooping through a box of books in the living room.

They are also all dressed in burgundy, albeit a different shade. The sisters prickle and pinball chaotically against the staid temperament of their mother. The discomfort of the first vignette’s conversation has a decidedly British tempo – the father’s use of ​“Bob’s your uncle” falls on confused ears. Grounding the verbal spars of the second in the customs and decorum of a specifically British family allows them to take on greater definition, truth and humour. Interruptions in real time, to use the bathroom or sell vintage clothes online, enable these moments to breathe. Still, Jarmusch’s film feels like it’s searching for something that it can’t quite articulate.

The final vignette provides ample space for reflection. The occasionally distracting stardom of the preceding segments gives way to raw and real turns from the comparative newcomers Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat. It feels like a long-awaited exhale. Perhaps Father Mother Sister Brother should be viewed as a matryoshka, the burgundy garment buried two layers deep brought closer to the surface with each successive sequence. What came before was merely a preface – musings on a theme that can only take full form here in an empty room. For there is no parent in this third act, not any more. Twins Skye and Billy sit in the Paris apartment that they used to occupy, speaking openly and honestly with a warmth that their forebears couldn’t muster. As their arc completes, it provides a satisfying coda for the two left incomplete. We too find ourselves feeling healed, whole again, however broken. Cradled by the view and our memories as we roll forward, we drive away – back to the present and our own adult lives.