The holiday season is around the corner and that means extended time around family. For some people, the lucky few, this is a time to look forward to when cousins, aunts, grandparents, and more descend upon a house for a holiday meal. For others, it’s a time of dread. Their family get-togethers can lead to all-out brawls over who brought the better pie. Family is a thorny topic because of its flexible and ever-changing dynamic and definition. Does blood define family? Can a family exist without having a DNA tie? Is blood enough to keep someone in your life? That’s the ever-looming theme of His Three Daughters, a taut, claustrophobic reflection on life seen through the relationships of three women who have nothing in common except their father.

Vinny (Jay O. Sanders) is dying. The at-home hospice worker (Rudy Galvan) can’t say exactly when, just that death is imminent. In his final hours, however long that may be, Vinny is surrounded by his three daughters. Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) traveled the farthest to get to Vinny’s bedside, coming from across the country to New York. Katie (Carrie Coon) only made the trip from Brooklyn, while Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) didn’t have to travel at all. Rachel has been Vinny’s primary caretaker since his health took a turn for the worse, but now that her sisters have arrived, she’s disappearing into her bedroom to bet on sports. The three sisters are confined in the apartment they grew up in as they wait for their father to pass away.

Grief, as all of us know, takes a million different forms. Some become extremely emotional and nostalgic, wanting to reflect on the happy memories and the good times. That’s Christina’s approach to it. Others go deep into problem-solving mode. They believe that if they can fix this one arbitrary issue, something will cosmically shift and everything will be okay. They know their actions won’t alter anything, but having a project allows them to keep themselves busy. Katie takes this route by spending all of her time trying to get a DNR form signed, despite Vinny’s vegetative state. Rachel’s grief is the hardest for her two sisters to understand. She acts as though everything is normal. Rachel smokes weed, brings her boyfriend over, and watches sports on her phone to keep track of her parlays. Despite the fact that they all share the same father, they’re far from understanding what the others are going through. They’ve all convened to mourn the same man, yet they have never been so far away from each other emotionally. Physically, they’re on top of each and cannot breathe.

The dynamic between Katie, Rachel, and Christina is truly that of siblings. They can move quickly from being at each other’s throats to laughing at their combined misery and loss. It’s a bond that transcends years of pleasantries rather than genuine connection. But it’s also a bond that doesn’t need to continue on. Blood relation alone is not enough to sustain a relationship. Everyone involved must work for it. His Three Daughters shows each of the sisters realizing this over the course of a few days.

Familial obligation is what got them there, but it’s their choice if they’ll continue to be in each other’s lives when the connective tissue that is their father passes away. It is a fascinating transformation from each of these women, who had vastly different childhoods. At the beginning, they talk to one another like strangers. Even the supposed closest ones can’t muster anything more meaningful than pleasantries that would be shared with a coworker or acquaintance. His Three Daughters is compelling in its examination of how these people became strangers to one another and how they decide if they want to be sisters in more than just name and blood.

“Thank you for doing better than me. For doing more.” It’s one of Vinny’s only lines in the film. Most of the time he’s nothing more than the sounds of his heartbeat on a bedside monitor behind a closed door. Finally, as His Three Daughters comes to a close, the audience gets to see the man who brought the women together. Two of them are now parents and are understanding their father’s role in a new light. They’re repeating the same mistakes their own parents made. His Three Daughters is messy in a way that reflects all of our families. The way we fight, the way we grieve, and, hopefully, the way we love.

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