‘DAD MOM SISTER’ review: Adam Driver, Indya Moore, and Jim Jarmusch reprise epic family drama

Nobody does a hangout movie like Jim Jarmusch. From his feature-length debut Vacation With a Deck further, the American writer/director has woven his connections to intimate settings and visual comedies with varying flourishes. Only Lovers Left gave us vampires hanging around decaying Detroit. The Dead Don’t Die he gave powerful ghouls and desires to hang out late at night, longing for coffee and chardonnay (and the mind). Now, FATHER, MOTHER, OUR SISTER offers a typical family hang – one that is wrong, funny, and sad.

Set over the course of three vignettes, Jarmusch’s latest vividly shows how different families are. again the same. His incredibly packed cast boasts Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Sarah Greene, Indya Moore, and Luka Sabbat. Together, they create short but strong stories of three families in ordinary and important moments, creating a captivating picture of love that is dirty and deep.

Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, and Tom Waits make for an awkward kickoff.

“Father” is the first of three chapters in the film. In a small town in New Jersey, brother and sister Jeff (Driver) and Emily (Bialik) are going to visit their father (Waits), and they’re excited. They put on woolen blazers, V-neck cardigans, trousers and a long skirt, dressed as if they were going to a business meeting rather than meeting their father who had not seen him for two years. As he approaches his ramshackle house, sitting at the end of a very long road full of mud, it is clear that they do not come here.

Waiting, on the other hand, is dressed in striped pants, a hoodie, and has a head of hair that hasn’t seen a brush or a little product in years. Their father’s house is full of books and clothes, as if after their mother died years before she could take care of herself. However, there are hints that their (unnamed) father has a life beyond their understanding, like the shiny Rolex on his wrist.

Within this reunion, Jarmusch’s text reveals a certain history, involving death, illness, divorce, and young grandchildren. But the movie keeps us firmly in this place, in this moment, when this family is confused about how to reconnect. There is no bad blood, there is confusion as to how this father created these children.

Where they are almost perverted, polite, and together, he seems like a tired whirlwind, embarrassed to be caught in the middle of a spin. The conflict they encounter is not one of shouting or smashing plates, but of swallowing conflicts and shared sorrows that they cannot say out loud. So instead, they will be civil and settle for small talk. Yet the visual storytelling and micro-plays Jarmusch weaves together allow the audience to explore deeper than these earlier siblings would have dared.

Charlotte Rampling, Cate Blanchett, and Vicky Krieps clash as mother and daughter.

“Mother” follows “Dad,” moving the film to Dublin, where a romance writer (Rampling) welcomes his two grown daughters for their annual afternoon tea. Where this matriarch is terrifyingly smart and beautiful, her daughters are a lesson in contrasts. Tiati, or Tim for short (Blanchett), is a loud pencil pusher who makes a lot of noise but always keeps the volume down, so as not to bother her. Her younger sister Lilith (Krieps) is a free spirit with pink hair, a funny attitude, and a penchant for lying very successfully to impress her mother.

There is no major difference between the three. Like “Dad’s” family, they have split up, seemingly content to have their own lives. But in this house, their intimacy stings. Lilith looks for ways to razz her sister, removing the sibling rivalry that forces Tim to back down. But this entry and exit is all a gentle way to do good. The tragedy of these moments is how we can see their desire to connect and their fear, all with a bleary eye, a stifled laugh, or a piece of cake.

Delightfully played as the most boring person in the film, Blanchett nevertheless conveys a quiet concern, giving off all the fury from Krieps’ Provocateur. Then Rampling adds a primly prickly veneer that is very funny. For example, when the three of them see that they are wearing red (a tailored dress, a modest turtleneck, a dying teenage sweater), the mother says it’s “shameful,” pushing her daughters into a pitiful conflict.

It is in the small moments that Jarmusch allows his audience to determine the meaning of these scenes and this collection of stories. But where the first two parts of this triptych are about troubled relationships, the last is a warm portrait of almost supernatural intimacy.

Indya Moore and Luke Sabbat are a revelation as twins.

In all three vignettes, Jarmusch’s characters share things, such as red clothes, a Rolex watch, sparkling toasts with soft drinks, images of young skaters carelessly rolling and moving slowly, and the repetition of the phrase “Bob’s your uncle.” But in this chapter, he breaks the pattern of the family of three. On the Paris set of “Sister Brother,” Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat play twins who explore what’s left of their childhood home after their parents die.

It’s been weeks since their parents passed away, so the sting of loss isn’t as sharp. Instead, the twins enjoy the simple luxury of being together. Like Jeff and Emily, they share a beauty. But it’s far from preppy; instead they like leather jackets and streetwear with a cool feel. Whether they are chatting in the car, getting coffee, or looking at childhood photos, they are relaxed. Where all other families have shown the need to sing, these twins have a connection that is so deep that it is before birth. They swear that even across the seas, they can hear when someone is sick or high.

While each of Jarmusch’s family is inside FATHER, MOTHER, OUR SISTER I feel familiar, Moore and Sabbat are so convincing in their chemistry and communication that I started to wonder if they are actually twins. (They are not.) This radiant love for each other smoothes the sadness of their story, because unlike the characters in other chapters, they are not alone together. They are together even when they are alone, because they truly see each other and do not melt into such trust and vulnerability.

After a press screening at the New York Film Festival, Jarmusch said in a Q&A that he didn’t make the movie with a message in mind. To suggest that there is a strong message would be to distort the soft development of all parts of this film. However considered as a whole, I found out FATHER, MOTHER, OUR SISTER It’s amazing what it says about family. On one level, it is a reminder that each family is unique and the same. We are all connected by a myriad of experiences, large and small, that are too common to be overlooked without a filmmaker’s focus. But more than that, FATHER, MOTHER, OUR SISTER it’s a tender, rich, and wonderful celebration of family love, which binds us and defines us – but not completely.

Part of the beauty of this film is where Jarmusch leaves each story. He’s rarely one of those buttoned-up ends. And here, in fact, he does not give even a day, but a few hours in the life of people bound by blood, and – what else? We get a window into their lives, and see how they see each other. Then, their story continues without us. Where will they go? What will they face? It’s a mystery that the movie won’t focus on, but we can.

In that, FATHER, MOTHER, OUR SISTER he invites us not only to see ourselves in these families, good or bad, but to think about what might happen in the lives of our loved ones when they close the door and the visit is over.

FATHER, MOTHER, OUR SISTER now streaming on Mubi.

Update: Feb. 26, 2026, 2:05 pm EST “DADDY, MOTHER, SISTER” had its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival. This update, originally published on Oct. 3. 2025, updated to include information about movie viewing options.