His Three Daughters director Azazel Jacobs explains the thought process behind Katie and Christina’s odd form of communication. The critically acclaimed movie has just arrived on Netflix after a successful festival debut in 2023 and stands among the top movies of the weekend. It unspools the complicated relationships between three sisters (played by Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen, and Natasha Lyonne) as they grapple with their father’s impending death. Throughout the movie, two of the sisters, Coon’s Katie and Olsen’s Christina, speak to each other in what sounds like gibberish, yet they understand each other perfectly.
Speaking to IndieWire, Jacobs explains how and why he developed a special language for Katie and Christina. Though it only crops up a couple of times throughout His Three Daughters, it’s jarring enough that it stands out. Jacobs initially describes it as pig Latin, a silly way of speaking that rearranges the letters of a word and adds suffixes, but then admits it’s a mix of something else. Both Coon and Olsen had to ask how to pronounce it, but in the end, they did so effortlessly. Jacobs says:
I didn’t speak it as a kid, and I just looked up different pig Latin languages, so I typed in the pig Latin — I don’t know if it’s that, it’s like a childish gibberish — that seemed like the simplest way of communicating.
It was something I’d seen with siblings before but not something I ever had. I wrote it out phonetically and I remember getting a call from both Lizzie and Carrie saying, ‘So how is this actually said?’
I only wrote. I didn’t know how it was said… I let them know, I just wrote it, and I hope you’ll figure it out, and they did, and by the time they showed up, they could both do it very quickly.
It was the first time I was hearing what that would sound like out of my mind, an instinct they used and embraced and stuck with.
What Katie & Christina’s Secret Language Means For His Three Daughters
They Share Something Their Sister Does Not
Largely taking place within one New York City apartment, His Three Daughters is an emotional character study that finds each of the eponymous women alternating between processing their father’s failing health and confronting their fraught relationships with each other. It’s established that Rachel, the third daughter played by Lyonne, is actually her father’s adopted child; while Katie and Christina are biologically his, Rachel joined their family when she was young. She’s closer in age to Katie, yet the two are estranged and often fight.
Whether this was done intentionally isn’t clear, but it creates a larger gap between the siblings that only heightens the overall tension.
Katie and Christina are years apart in age, but His Three Daughters shows their closeness through their interactions, which noticeably don’t involve Rachel. The secret pig Latin-esque language only hammers this concept home, as they went out of their way to create a way of speaking that didn’t involve Rachel. Whether this was done intentionally isn’t clear, but it creates a larger gap between the siblings that only heightens the overall tension.
Our Take On The Secret Language In His Three Daughters
It’s An Effective Way Of Showing History
While watching His Three Daughters, I got tripped up initially when Christina and Katie spoke in an unintelligible language. For a second, I wondered if I hadn’t been paying enough attention to what they were saying. However, upon realizing what was going on, I soon saw the brilliance behind the decision. As the movie takes place over the course of a few days, and the plot is so firmly rooted in what will happen during those days, it doesn’t offer any flashbacks into the women’s childhoods. Because of that, we are left to piece together a picture of their histories.
The made-up language between Coon and Olsen’s characters hints at their upbringing. Though they didn’t really grow up together, as Katie is much older than Christina, they had a bond deep enough to form their own way of communicating. It’s revealed that their mother died when Christina was quite young; it could be that, while they were navigating their grief, Christina and Katie turned to each other and pushed out the outside world by speaking exclusively to each other. Though His Three Daughters still leaves most details a mystery, this one clue goes a long way in recreating their backstories.
Source: IndieWire
