Family relationships can be many things—some comforting, some incredibly awkward and tenuous, others stained by grief and loss. As I’ve grown older and experienced loss myself, those dynamics feel especially present in my mind right now. Jim Jarmusch’s new film Father Mother Sister Brother explores these themes in a deeply attentive way. A minimalist triptych, the film meanders through three different families, each shaped by its own idiosyncratic tensions, while subtle connective threads quietly link the stories together.
Like most Jarmusch films, the pace is slow, but between the ambient score, moments of deliberate slow motion, the dry comedy, and some truly beautiful transitional imagery, the film feels deeply present—more so than almost anything I’ve seen in a long time. There’s a weight to it, but it never feels melancholic. It’s funny, sometimes sad, and ultimately life-affirming.
Father Mother Sister Brother is now playing at Film Streams.
A Traveler’s Needs, the most recent film from Korean director Hong Sang-soo, has all the familiar hallmarks of his work. It’s his third collaboration with the legendary Isabelle Huppert, and, as with many of his films, it’s written, directed, shot, edited, and even scored by Hong himself.
Where many of his stories revolve around drunken filmmakers unraveling their lives through a series of increasingly bad decisions, this one centers on a woman teaching French in South Korea. She’s not a trained teacher — her methods are, let’s say, idiosyncratic. She asks her students to describe their inner feelings, a task difficult enough in your native language, let alone in a second.
That premise alone would have drawn me in, but paired with Huppert’s enigmatic presence, the film takes on a quiet, almost magical quality — one that’s lingered with me since my first viewing. I love this film. And I’m grateful that Hong Sang-soo continues to make one or two films every year. There’s always a new one to look forward to.
A Traveler’s Needs is now streaming on Mubi.
