SCREEN

Jim Jarmusch gets cosy and familial; strange relationships in rural Germany; a Cornish fisherman’s tale; and more

FATHER MOTHER SISTER BROTHER Back in 2014, Jim Jarmusch told Uncut about his plan for what could have been his quintessential film. “John Lurie and Tom Waits were brothers who did not get along at all. Their father was a recluse, semi-alcoholic, but very intelligent; an interesting, gruff guy living out in nowhere, with a bottle and shotgun. I wanted the father to be Lee Marvin.”

The idea birthed a secret society – The Sons of Lee Marvin, comprising Waits and Lurie and sundry lost boys such as Nick Cave, Iggy Pop and Neil Young – but with Marvin himself long dead, the film remained a wistful pipe dream. For almost half a century, Jarmusch has investigated the many varieties of human loneliness, drifting through an oddball America of jailbirds, hobos, barflies, cab drivers, cowboys, vampires, samurai – and even, with 2019’s The Dead Don’t Die, zombies. You find fleeting couples and companions, but rarely a regular human family. Until now.

Father Mother Sister Brother is Jarmusch’s 14th feature and easily his quietest – the shift from flesh-eating undead to tinkling teacups could scarcely be more extreme. But in a way it’s a homecoming. In fact, you could argue that the family unit is the ultimate horror in the Jarmusch cinematic universe – the institution everyone is on the run from.

Making himself comfortable: Tom Waits in Father Mother Sister Brother

He is, of course, an old hand at the anthology movie, and the film is formed of three distinct vignettes. A pair of awkward adult siblings (Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik) drive to see their father (Tom Waits) in snowy New Jersey. Two chalk-and-cheese sisters (Vicky Krieps and Cate Blanchett) pay a visit to their mother (Charlotte Rampling) in bourgeois Dublin. And, following the death of their parents, a pair of twins (Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat) pack up their old family apartment in autumnal Paris. The scenes feel like decaffeinated, smoke-free episodes from the Jarmusch deadpan coffeeshop universe.