Venice #82 - Father Mother Sister Brother

After the Hindenburgian crash of The Dead Don’t Die, Jim Jarmusch redeems himself with a triumphant return to form. Rest assured, he only lost track for a moment, but now he’s back, steady hands on the wheel, steering cinema into quieter, richer waters.

Father Mother Sister Brother is a masterclass in restraint, a film that whispers instead of shouts and trusts you to lean in close. At a brisk, confident pace, it unfolds with an elegance rarely seen, with no clunky exposition, no hand-holding, just sailing across the self-enforced rituals of politeness, awkward silences, and conversations that feel like icebergs: most of the meaning is hidden beneath the surface.

Across its three stories, recurring props and motifs - a line of dialogue here, a framed shot there, even the oddly hypnotic presence of slow-motion skateboarders - create invisible threads, subtly binding the narratives in ways you only notice after the fact.

In each tale, two siblings reunite facing unresolved tensions with their distant parents. One truth quietly reverberates: these characters don’t really know their parents, and their present situation feels like a blur. Jarmusch has always been fascinated by rhythm, and here he plays it like chamber music: themes repeat, refract, and return, the film’s quiet comedy and melancholy constantly echoing back on itself.

Jim Jarmusch makes this hollowness palpable; he lets you sit in the void, in the awkward silences, the fumbled gestures, the paper-thin rituals stretched like wallpaper over a collapsing wall.

Played by a dream cast including Tom Waits, Charlotte Rampling, Adam Driver, Cate Blanchett, the performances are uniformly wonderful, each character rendered with such delicacy that the tiniest glance or pause carries the weight of an accusation, or a confession. Their intrinsic incommunicability feels simultaneously drenched in irony, and yet utterly true to life. It’s a film that understands that what isn’t said is often louder than dialogue, and sometimes silence is the sharpest line of all.

“You can’t choose your family,” the film seems to suggest, but you can choose what to watch. And in this case, do yourself a favour: choose this.

4/5