Dir/Wri: Jim Jarmusch | US Comedy 2025
Offbeat humour and amusing performances from Charlotte Rampling, Adam Driver, Vicky Krieps and Kate Blanchett make this wry trio of interlocking domestic stories worthy of winning the Golden Lion at Venice this summer.
In his kitsch comedy Jim Jarmusch touches on everyday concerns: is our water polluted? Is social media taking over from reality? Do we really know our father, mother, sister, or brother or do we just accept the image they choose to project.
The three tales are distinct but echo the same themes. The first, entitled ‘Father’, sees Tom (Adam Driver) and his supercilious sister Emily (Mayim Bialik) roll up in a black Range Rover at the lakeside hovel of their eccentric father Tom Waits, for a rare visit to the recent widower. Exchanging knowing glances, the two assume – from messages of doom – that their dad is living on his uppers. And the inimitable Waits does nothing to alter their perception, brushing off his cares and gladly accepting a box of groceries kindly meant, but condescending, from his ‘favourite’ (and only) son Tom. This contains, amongst other banalities, a pasta sauce with the cheese ‘already added’.
Dad has a relaxed hippyish style, a ‘fake’ Rolex peeping out of his frayed shirt cuff. Emily is all prim and proper wearing a stiffly tailored sports jacket suggestive of a small-town head mistress, too distant and frigid to be likeable. The Rolex story is the twist in the tale and will reappear in the other two strands, along with the old-fashioned English expression “Bob’s your Uncle”.
Over glass of water the three wade through laborious platitudes until Tom announces their departure due to the impending darkness, awkward tedium giving way to relief as they exchange empty goodbyes, Tom proffering a fistful of notes to his dad ‘to tide him over’. We recognise these people but they give nothing away to each other and the weight of this unknowability hangs heavy in the air. So little said, so much inferred.
The second part, ‘Mother’, features Charlotte Rampling as a buttoned-down English author living in Dublin, where her daughters — winsome Timothea (Blanchett) and pink-haired influencer Lilith (Krieps) have moved to be closer to her yet couldn’t be more distant, seeing her once a year for a strained afternoon tea where no secrets are shared, each putting on a positive facebook style spin of their life., “So, shall I be mother?” Rampling asks as she holds a china teapot aloft over the delicately arranged fondant fancies. Lilith answers tellingly, “You might as well start sometime,” and that says it all about this female family threesome who are affectionate but clearly not close, and harbouring unresolved conflict from the past.
The most genuine but least amusing family pairing comes on the final episode ‘Sister Brother’ where adult twins Skye (Indya Moore) and Billy (Luka Sabbat) reminisce over their childhood in a Paris apartment recently vacated by their deceased parents. Unlike the previous two families they open their hearts and exude a comfortable physicality although what later transpires reveals how little they really knew about their parents’ life, including their mysterious death.
DoP Yorick Le Saux, who shot Only Lovers Left Alive for Jarmusch, echoes the familial regret in expressive images of a snowbound Northern US state, a damp Dublin and a wintry Paris that seem to compliment this almost bleak picture of alienation in modern family life. @MeredithTaylor
NOW SCREENING AT BFI LFF | VENICE FILM FESTIVAL GOLDEN LION WINNER 2025.