Elizabeth Olsen used to frequent the indie drama scene before her prolonged stint in the MCU; in that context, seeing her return to form with Netflix’s recent family drama, Azazel Jacobs’ His Three Daughters, was a decent experience for the fans. Playing the role of Christina, the youngest daughter of dying Vincent, Olsen was able to navigate through the layered characterization by subtly exploring the deep-seated inner pathos, deftly contrasting with the superficial external façade.
Spoilers Ahead
Christina’s Relationship With Her Sisters And Her Father
Christina appears to have a much more balanced life and is more composed and sensitive than her two sisters, always acting as the mediator between Katie and Rachel, who never see eye to eye with each other. While both of her sisters lived in New York, with or at least close to Vincent, Christina had to settle far away and couldn’t visit her father as often. As a new mother, Christina was having the best time of her life, until the news of her father’s deteriorating physical condition brought her back to her family home. Christina feels more at ease with Katie, her biological elder sister, and the duo have their secret gibberish language as well, which further highlights how they live in their own sphere, which doesn’t include Rachel. Compared to Katie, Christina is more sympathetic towards Rachel, although not by a lot, as she still considers her to be somewhat of an outsider.
Christina maintains a balance between her two families, never letting her husband and daughter get a hint of the emotional turbulence she is going through while speaking with them over the phone. Her fake accent, and her preoccupation with trying to pretend that there is nothing wrong with the dysfunctional relationship dynamics among the sisters, conveys that she needs to project an image of ideal perfection. Christina is the one who tends to their comatose bedridden father the most ever since returning to their family home, so much so that on one occasion Katie and Rachel are surprised not to find her in Vincent’s room. Even though Rachel and Katie don’t find any common ground otherwise, they share a very generalized view about Christina’s perfect life, her love for “Grateful Dead,” and in some ways Christina is alienated by her elder sisters in this way. Christina cannot connect with her elder sisters’ penchant for morbid humor; for her, death isn’t a phenomenon to be trivialized. For them, in some way the dutiful, caring, organized little sister who comes off as pretentious with her overly constrained demeanor, suppressing her emotions with a self-care routine, is inaccessible and unrelatable at the same time. However, what both of them fail to acknowledge is the fact that, as revealed in Vincent’s monologue in the final moments of the movie, Christina has adapted such an outlook to deal with her loneliness.
After the death of his first wife, Vincent was consumed in his grief for so long that he failed to realize that his youngest daughter needed a guardian by her side to cope with the pain as well. Before Chistina could adjust to a new reality, Vincent got married again, and no one really cared about helping little Christina process the mixed emotions she must have been feeling back then. By Vincent’s admission, from a young age, Christina had learned to take care of herself, which made everyone around her consider her to be self-sufficient from the get-go, never bothering about the fact that she too might have trouble dealing with everything on her own. Katie and Rachel left their family home when Christina was still young, and Vincent, despite being a loving father, couldn’t allot his time to her. A grown-up Christina became a better guardian than her father was, and even while staying away, she always tries her best to make her young daughter, Mirabella, feel assured about her presence. Unlike her elder sisters, Christina spent most of her life without a mother, but after growing up, she went on to become the most maternal of them all. In some way, like Rachel, Christina doesn’t want her vulnerable side exposed in front of her sisters—so she tightly wraps herself up in the mask of being the happy, balanced, nonchalant young sister in front of them.
Christina was preoccupied with the idea of the three sisters making amends with each other during the final days of their father, without actually knowing how to bring it about. They don’t really become honest with what they feel towards each other, which becomes the biggest impediment for a possible reconciliation, and Christina, who has guarded her emotional self with measured behavior and affectations, needed to take the first step. Finally, the ‘5 Little Ducklings’ poem, which Christina recites to her sisters during the concluding moments of the movie, acts like a knot, which binds the sisters closer than ever. The final line of the poem about Father Duck uttering ‘beep, beep, beep’ is a morbid reference to the sound of a heart monitor affixed with Vincent in his final days, which eventually brought back all the estranged ducklings—the three sisters—together. It is out of character for Christina to make a joke at the expense of their dying father, but shedding her superficial façade, Christina can now acknowledge that she can find humor in it too. The final shot of Rachel laughing after recalling the joke conveys that the bond among the sisters is now stronger than ever.
