Father Mother Sister Brother, the latest feature from veteran indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, launched this evening at the Venice Film Festival.
Starring are Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Sarah Greene, Indya Moore, Luka Sabbat, and Françoise Lebrun in the story of estranged siblings who reunite after years apart, forced to confront unresolved tensions and reevaluate their strained relationships with their emotionally distant parents.
Although critics have agreed that the ending can feel incomplete to some, it comes with a sense of contentment amid a sea of uneasiness.
Deadline’s Damon Wise called the movie “an elevated cringe comedy” that harkens back to Jarmusch’s earlier work of the 1980s and ’90s. “Compared to 2005’s Broken Flowers, this is a wilfully obscure step back to his deadpan, experimental roots, a gentle, almost deliberately un-film that is best not viewed in too much proximity to the witching hour,” he writes.
“Nothing seems to land, but somehow it lingers; enjoy it or not, Father Mother Sister Brother will worm its way into your brain like false memory syndrome, a fitfully funny, if never laugh-out-loud reminder that you can’t choose your family,” adds Wise.
The Guardian‘s Peter Bradshaw wrote in his review, “You might sit through this film waiting for a crisis or a confrontation: some explosion of temper or passionate demand for honesty. None will arrive. Basically, there is a contentment and calm here, an acceptance and a Zen simplicity that is a cleansing of the moviegoing palate, or perhaps the fiction-consuming palate in general. It is a film to savour.”
IndieWire‘s Ryan Lattanzio gave the film an A-, noting that it provides viewers “almost everything if you can tap into its cool vibrations.” He explained the movie “is about as dry as a physical copy of short stories you’ve loved since you were a child. There are no protagonists or antagonists, just people moving through life, Jarmusch catching moments of them the way that David Lynch once caught ideas like fish moving down a stream. This is a movie Lynch would’ve admired, brittly funny and content to linger in doorways and thresholds for as long as it takes until somebody breaks the awkward silence. Or not.”
Next Best Picture‘s Cody Dericks ranked the film 7/10, calling it “a cinematic series of variations on a theme, proving to be a gentle yet humorous look at how we interact with the people we have no choice but to know and, hopefully, love. Family interactions on film are often either tumultuous or overly sentimental. Here, Jarmusch crafts an understated story for audiences whose family relations are somewhere in between, and it’s all the more relatable for it.”
Vulture‘s Bilge Ebiri wrote that the film “finds the director in a minor key, which is sometimes his best key,” adding: “A triptych built around a series of aggressively unremarkable interactions, it feels like a film that the director might have made while waiting to make a different, bigger film.”
The Playlist‘s Marshall Shaffer wrote, “It’s not an exceptionally distinguished work, either on its own merits or in the context of writer-director Jim Jarmusch’s filmography. It’s not particularly enjoyable to watch or consider in retrospect. And yet, it’s capable of stirring deep, profound sadness in its simplicity.”
The Wrap‘s Ben Croll had a less flattering view of the film, writing, “But even if the finale makes strong thematic sense, it rarely engages on other, arguably equally important, levels, making for somewhat deflating experience.
“But all that’s par the course, I suppose,” he added. “Like any family, Father Mother Sister Brother has its ups and downs. And, like any family, you’re allowed to pick favorites.”
Producers on the Mubi-backed film are Charles Gillibert, Joshua Astrachan, Carter Logan, and Atilla Salih Yücer. The Match Factory is handling international sales and reported a host of early deals in July. Along with the U.S., Mubi has the rights for Latin Americathe , UK, Ireland, Benelux, Turkey, and India. Domestic release comes in December.
The post ‘Father Mother Sister Brother’: What The Critics Are Saying About Jim Jarmusch’s Latest — Venice appeared first on Deadline.
