The father in the Netflix film “His Three Daughters” is dying of cancer, a tragic scenario that brings together the women he helped raise. They take turns sitting by his bedside and awaiting the inevitable in the Brooklyn apartment where they grew up. Until a scene late in the film, we don’t see the dying man; he’s represented only by the incessant beeping of the machines monitoring him. It’s as if the film is conditioning us for the moment those beeps cease.
The sisters have unfinished business with one another; misunderstandings and hidden grudges abound, each exacerbated by the stressful situation. The vast differences in their temperaments will be recognizable to anyone who’s ever had a sibling.
Katie (Carrie Coon), the oldest, is a bit of a control freak. She bosses her sisters around when she’s not arguing with her rebellious teenage daughter on the phone. She complains about always having to play bad cop to her husband’s good cop. Director Azazel Jacobs gives Katie the opening scene of the movie, filming her in front of a blank wall that makes her look strict and unyielding.
Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) is the free spirit. We’re told she was once a follower of the Grateful Dead. At first, she appears to be a flibbertigibbet of sorts, expressing flighty thoughts and getting distracted by coincidences. As the film progresses, however, we see she’s far more complicated. The peacekeeper, she’s also worried about being away from her young daughter for the first time.
Rounding out the trio is Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), who’s related to the other two siblings by their father’s second marriage — she’s his wife’s daughter whom he raised as his own. Rachel had been living with her father long before he took ill, and had been his primary caretaker since he was diagnosed. Once her sisters arrive, she refuses to sit in the room with their father, opting instead to smoke blunts and antagonize Katie with her sharp retorts.
Once the general premise is established, “His Three Daughters” lets us bask in the glory of three actors at the top of their game. Each is superb in her own way, with Lyonne giving a career-best performance. She isn’t afraid to look haggard in some scenes, and her expressive face conveys a hurt Rachel is unwilling to fully acknowledge. “He’s my father, too,” she says to her siblings, and you feel her pain deep in your gut.
Coon’s role plays to her strengths as an actor who can easily command authority. Katie talks fast, and her verbal attacks are ruthless. She’s constantly doing busy work like washing dishes and cooking, presumably to distract herself. Her angry daughter is unwilling to listen to her demands, so Katie turns to chastising Rachel in her own house.
Olsen has the most difficult role to play. Her character is yet another good cop with whom Katie’s bad cop must partner against her will. Christina is also maintaining a façade where everything in her life appears to be perfect, much to the resentment of her siblings.
Jacobs’s screenplay is wise about how those we love use words to wound or comfort us. The film also rings true about the shared stories and in-jokes families develop. For example, whenever their father’s hospice care worker Angel (Rudy Galvan) visits, the sisters mock his melodramatic explanations about their father’s condition after he leaves.
Most of “His Three Daughters” takes place in an apartment that never feels cramped or like a stage play. Cinematographer Sam Levy uses gliding pans between walls and shifts in perspective to make the location just big enough to hold three excellent performances.
★★★½
HIS THREE DAUGHTERS
Written and directed by Azazel Jacobs. Starring Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, Natasha Lyonne, Rudy Galvan. At Coolidge Corner, Landmark Kendall Square, suburbs. On Netflix starting Sep. 20. 101 minutes. R (drug use, profanity)
Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.