Father Mother Sister Brother (2025)

A Golden Lion for the First Act - Father Mother Sister Brother review by griggs

The Golden Lion at the 2025 Venice Film Festival still feels like one of those awards that makes you wonder whether you accidentally watched the wrong film. I’m usually very easy to win over with Jarmusch, but this one never quite came together for me. The problem, oddly enough, is the three-part structure. It ought to give the film a cumulative force, with each section adding something new. Instead, it mostly highlights how much better the first chapter is than the other two.

That opening section is the one that really works. It has the dry, awkward, faintly melancholy Jarmusch magic that can make people sitting in a room feel oddly riveting. Tom Waits, Mayim Bialik and Adam Driver are terrific together, and they actually feel like a family rather than three actors whose agents all returned the call at the same time. There’s humour, tension and just enough intrigue to pull you in. I’d happily have watched a whole film about those three mooching about and being eccentric in knitwear.

Once the film moves on, though, it starts to feel like diminishing returns. The second section has a cast most directors would sell a kidney for, but it never really comes alive. Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Charlotte Rampling and Sarah Greene are all watchable, but I never believed the family dynamic for a second. The whole thing feels assembled rather than lived-in. Maybe Jarmusch’s own worst enemy now is that so many actors want to work with him that the films can start to feel a bit overstuffed, like a dinner party where nobody had the nerve to cut the guest list.

The third section is easier to go with because the central relationship is more immediately believable, and the performances are good. But by then the film has lost too much momentum. It’s thinner, less funny and less intriguing than the first story, and it starts to feel as if Jarmusch is mistaking hanging about for depth. He can get away with that more than most directors, but not here. It reaches a point where it feels ready to end, then lingers like a guest who has said goodbye three times and is somehow still in your hallway.

So in the end, this felt like a miss. Not just because the later sections are weaker, but because the film never turns its triptych structure into anything cumulative or satisfying. It peaks early, then drifts. Maybe the Venice win sent my expectations into orbit, but even allowing for that, only the first section really landed for me.