His Three Daughters (2023)
Emotions run high when three estranged sisters reunite in a cramped New York City apartment to watch over their ailing father during his final days. The film follows their tense, often funny attempts to manage his care while confronting long-simmering family conflicts and unresolved grievances. As they wait for the inevitable, the sisters struggle to repair their broken relationship with one another.
Narrative Score
Full Plot & Ending Explained
Intro
Following the terminal decline of their father Vincent, three estranged half-sisters—Katie, Rachel, and Christina—gather in Vincent’s New York City apartment, where Rachel has been living and helping care for him during hospice care, to wait for his imminent death and confront years of resentment.
Turning Point 1
Katie immediately clashes with Rachel over Rachel’s marijuana smoking in the apartment and over practical neglect, especially when she discovers that the refrigerator is nearly empty except for a few bags of apples; she also criticizes Rachel for not getting Vincent to sign a do-not-resuscitate order while he was still lucid, which deepens the sisters’ tension and establishes Katie as the most controlling and judgmental of the three.
Turning Point 2
While the sisters settle into the apartment, hospice worker Angel and nurse Mirabella visit and make it clear that Vincent could die suddenly and soon, forcing the sisters into a tense vigil; Katie tries and fails to write Vincent’s obituary, Christina becomes emotionally overwhelmed by the situation, and Rachel refuses to enter Vincent’s bedroom even when he appears to be close to death, choosing instead to distract herself with sports betting and stubborn denial.
Turning Point 3
A major source of conflict emerges when the sisters realize that Rachel is set to become the leaseholder of their family’s longtime rent-controlled apartment after Vincent dies, which makes Katie accuse Rachel of waiting for their father to die so she can take the apartment; the argument exposes long-standing jealousy and class resentment, especially because Katie has lived nearby in Brooklyn yet rarely helped with Vincent’s care, while Rachel points out the hypocrisy in her sisters’ sudden moral criticism.
Turning Point 4
After one false alarm in which the sisters think Vincent has finally died, Rachel brings her boyfriend Benjy to the apartment, and he bluntly defends her by pointing out how badly her sisters treat her and how little Katie contributed to Vincent’s daily care; this moment briefly validates Rachel’s bitterness, but it also widens the emotional gulf among all three sisters before the film’s final reconciliation.
Turning Point 5
Eventually, the three sisters enter Vincent’s room together and move him to his favorite chair in the living room, where he suddenly rips off his medical equipment, unexpectedly stands, and delivers a moving monologue about loving each of them, loving New York City, and accepting life and death; the emotional shock of seeing him alive and lucid briefly gives the sisters hope, but the moment turns tragic when Vincent sits down in the chair and dies almost immediately after, revealing that his farewell speech was effectively his last act.
Ending
After Vincent’s death, the sisters remain together in the apartment and share the chair in turn as a final act of mourning and connection, allowing them to acknowledge both their grief and their complicated bond; Katie and Christina eventually leave, while Rachel, now the leaseholder, stays behind in the apartment, and the film ends with the sisters no longer openly at war but still carrying the weight of Vincent’s death and their unresolved family history.
Cross-checked against Wikipedia and other public film references. View on Letterboxd ↗ The Narrative Score above is an experimental 5-axis rating, not a critic score.