Tom Waits Plays a Weird Reclusive Dad in Teaser for Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Father Mother Sister Brother’

Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch has assembled a characteristically stacked cast to dig into some prickly family dynamics in the new teaser for his next film, Father Mother Sister Brother.

Like some of Jarmusch’s most renowned works — Mystery Train, Night on Earth, Coffee and Cigarettes — Father Mother Sister Brother is an anthology film with three distinct stories centered around the dynamics between adult children and their parents. The Father story, for instance, stars longtime Jarmusch favorite Tom Waits as a reclusive dad, living somewhere in the northeast United States, who’s visited by his grown children, played by Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik.

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“What do you say we toast our tea to ‘family relations,’” Waits’ character says in that distinct, gravely drawl of his. Later in the clip, Driver’s character — who seems to have a much more strained relationship with dad — questions, “Can you toast with tea, though?” This elicits a disappointed shake of the head from Waits, and a deadpan, “Really?” from Bialik.

In the Brother Sister part of the triptych, Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat play twins who return to the Paris apartment where they grew up to take care of a family tragedy. And in Mother, Cate Blanchett and Vicky Krieps are sisters visiting their novelist mother, played by Charlotte Rampling, in Dublin.

“We seem to be accidentally color-coordinated,” Rampling’s character says with cheerful disdain, while acknowledging the touch of red in everyone’s outfit. “How embarrassing.”

Father Mother Sister Brother is set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival this Saturday, Aug. 30. In a director’s statement, Jarmusch called it “a kind of anti-action film, its subtle and quiet style carefully constructed to allow small details to accumulate — almost like flowers being carefully placed in three delicate arrangements.”

The film marks Jarmusch’s first in six years, following 2019’s The Dead Don’t Die. It’s set to be released in the U.S. on Dec. 24 via Mubi.

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