‘His Three Daughters’ Review: Director Azazel Jacobs Proves He’s Major in a Family Saga Starring Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic In 2008, the writer-director Azazel Jacobs made a small but vivid splash with “Momma’s Man,” a Sundance comedy about a troubled dweeb hiding out in the cocoon of his parents’ downtown Manhattan apartment.
The parents were played by Jacobs’ own (the avant-garde filmmaker Ken Jacobs and his wife Flo), and the movie turned their overstuffed bohemian pack-rat museum of a loft into a tiny city of its own. “Momma’s Man” showed extraordinary promise, and in the 15 years since I’ve been waiting for Azazel Jacobs to make good on it.
But while he has given us a compelling movie or two (I enjoyed “The Lovers,” an offbeat marital portrait starring Debra Winger and Tracy Letts), they have all felt minor, and his last feature, “French Exit,” while it generated Oscar buzz for Michelle Pfeiffer, was equal parts charming and contrived.
Now, though, the angels have smiled. Jacobs has taken the leap I always wanted him to make and become a filmmaker of effortless and moving assurance. “His Three Daughters,” which premiered yesterday at the Toronto Film Festival, is another movie that takes place almost entirely in a New York City apartment (this one is in the Bronx), a set-up that seems, for some reason, to bring out the best in this director.
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