We Have a Bad Connection

Cate Blanchett and a starry cast expose families at odds in Father Mother Sister Brother

- KAT PETTIBONE

In Father Mother Sister Brother (in theaters Dec. 24), director Jim Jarmusch explores the inner workings of disconnected families through three distinct stories, each centered on adult children reckoning with longstanding emotional distance. For Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps, the film’s “Mother” chapter became an intimate study of how siblings, no matter how grown, fall back into old roles when under a parent’s eye.

Set in Dublin, the vignette follows sisters Tim (Blanchett) and Lilith (Krieps) as they reunite with their mother (Charlotte Rampling) for tea — a ritualized meeting that happens just once a year at the suggestion of her therapist. Despite its surface politeness, the annual visit becomes a pressure cooker where resentment is communicated through baited silences and passive-aggressive remarks.

“There’s a real gentle power to the film, and it accrues a kind of collective understanding of what families can mean,” Blanchett, 56, tells