Acting when there’s something to do is relatively straightforward. But what about when there’s nothing to get hold of? Father Mother Sister Brother is full of empty space, and for whole stretches of time the characters in it don’t really know how to fill the silence. They babble. They fall silent. They pick up on a tiny detail and won’t let it go. Because where a relationship should be there is none.
Jim Jarmusch’s latest film is episodic, three bijou, beautifully crafted Carver-esque mini-dramas. In story one a brother and sister visit their ageing father, who lives all alone and on the breadline miles from anywhere in rural New Jersey. As they approach in the car Jeff (Adam Driver) and Emily (Mayim Bialik) nervously discuss dad’s situation. Should he be there all on his own, does he have enough money, have either of them done anything for him lately, should they be doing more? When they arrive at dad’s untidy shack, he (Tom Waits) seems happy to see them, talks about their trip up, the colours of the clothes they’re wearing, the chairs in his house, the taste of the water he offers them, signs of the zodiac, in an exquisitely pitched display of a man who has no idea what to say. They, also, have no idea what to say back. At one point Emily notices that dad is wearing a Rolex. It’s another thing to talk about, so she does. It’s a fake, says dad. Then he suggests – possibly out of badness – that they should stay for dinner, which prompts Jeff and Emily to skedaddle as fast as they can. In the car on the way back they wonder whether the watch really was a fake.
And on to the next story, in which daughters Timothea (Cate Blanchett) and Lilith (Vicky Krieps) visit their mother (Charlotte Rampling), a rather grand and successful novelist who lives in a lovely house in Dublin, and have a similarly fraught time over tea and cakes. Nothing much is said of any consequence but the relationships seem obvious – Lilith craves her mother’s approval but doesn’t get it, Timothea feels very little for the woman known only as Mother, while the mother, smiling throughout but decorously, pours tea and offers her daughter slices of Battenberg. It is obviously the daughters’ annual visit and just as obviously the kids resent their mother because she dedicated her life to her career rather than them.
In the final segment, a pair of twins in Paris, Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat), meet to visit their parents’ high-ceilinged apartment for the last time. It seems the parents recently died in a plane crash. As Skye and Billy sit in the big, almost empty place, they look at pictures of their parents when young – how cool they were, what hipster dudes! How little they knew them, they realise.
The stories are not related, except thematically, but Jarmusch adds other little connectors – Rolex watches recur, skateboarders also (who are either solo performers or involved in a group practice, depending on your angle of approach). And in every one of the three stories the phrase “Bob’s your uncle” pops up, one way or another. But the families here are not at all sorted, or not in the way that the phrase “Bob’s your uncle” suggests.
The first two stories – empty, awkward displays of filial duty rather than love – are completed by the third, where Skye and Billy get to bring things to an emotional conclusion with declarations of sibling love amid a re-assessment of their parents’ lives.
They are chamber pieces, consisting – especially in the first two stories – of silences, pauses, and excellent actors building teetering performances based on nothings, evasions, the lacing of fingers, the shuffle of a foot. The film is like a John Cage work based on what’s not there rather than what is. If you have anyone in your life with whom you have a relationship like the ones Jarmusch is interested in here, this film is likely to hit hard.
Father Mother Sister Brother – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2026
