Film Review: Jim Jarmusch Explores Family Fractures with 'Father Mother Sister Brother'

The auteur marries his love of anthology film to globe-hopping in this graceful comedy

(“Shall I be mother?” Charlotte Rampling in Father Mother Sister Brother. Mubi)

Jim Jarmusch has a thing about triads, anthology films, oddball repetitions, and wildly disparate destinations. His new film, Father Mother Sister Brother, combines the globe-hopping of Night on Earth with his impulse to create features from casually or thematically connected fragments (as in Coffee and Cigarettes, Mystery Train, the aforementioned Night on Earth, and, one could argue, Broken Flowers).

(Adam Driver in Father Mother Sister Brother. Mubi)

Jarmusch also loves assembling surprising casts, often featuring Tom Waits but also, not unlike Woody Allen, spreading his net wide. In this case, a triptych of gatherings by somewhat disconnected family members is rooted by Waits (along with Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik) as a grifting New Jersey father serving his kids tap water in the first chapter; they are paying him a visit that feels more like a wellness check, but details that surface suggest he’s thriving, if only thanks to their gullibility. What follows in the second segment is the stunning triad of Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, and Vicky Krieps meeting up for tea in Dublin; Rampling plays a frosty mother and successful novelist, while Blanchett and Krieps portray chalk-and-cheese sisters. In the third part, fraternal twins played by Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat reconnect in Paris to pay a final visit to the flat of their late parents, share reminiscences, and marvel at the mysteries Mom and Dad have left behind.

(Tom Waits in Father Mother Sister Brother. Mubi)in Father Mother Sister Brother. Mubi)

Though these chatty, closely observed, and meticulously calibrated mini-dramas vary widely in tone and approach, they have a lot of elements in common: Rolex watches, the color red, swarms of skateboarders, inadvertently matched fashion choices, and a time-honored British saying that on the surface gestures at the idea of family relations but whose origins are, by some accounts, tangled up in a notorious case of nepotism. In this film, though, kinship carries a risk of exploitation and blood being thicker than water is a mixed blessing, when it’s a blessing at all. Waits’ wily patriarch contrives endless scams to sponge off his kids (especially Driver’s Jeff, a soft touch who knows he’s being had but can’t say no); that freeloading instinct is transferred to Krieps’ wild-child daughter, Lilith (!) in the second segment, while Blanchett’s high-strung Timothea nervously seeks to keep the peace.

(Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, and Vicky Krieps in Father Mother Sister Brother. Mubi)

The final chapter has a significantly sweeter disposition, and a very different sort of generational disconnect. Billy (Sabbat) and Sky (Moore) sip espressos at a cafe and, though being reunited for the first time in years, mostly avoid the distrustful awkwardness of the other families on display. If there’s any sense of something sketchy of out of joint, it lies in the intriguing hints Billy has uncovered that their parents had a more outrageous life than they knew. (Why else would they have needed all those fake IDs?)

(Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat in Father Mother Sister Brother. Mubi)

What’s it all about? The better question is: What isn’t it about? While it might not have the nested puns Jarmusch packed into Paterson, or the open-ended loopiness of films like Only Lovers Left Alive or Dead Man, this film feels more integrated and complete than have some Jarmusch joints. The auteur skates past absurdities and delves into profundities with such swift precision you almost miss him doing it.

“Father Mother Sister Brother” opens in theaters January 9, 2026.