"Your Sister's Sister" - Film Review

Sometimes films need time to breathe. To linger on a shot; to allow quieter moments; to let actors act without interruption. To simply refuse to allow the plot to rear its ugly head into the picture and hijack the movie. Often times films fail to do this and it leads to disappointment.

On the other hand, you have films like Your Sister’s Sister, which allows itself to breathe, and man is it rewarding. 

As Bryan Cranston mentioned about Breaking Bad, “The little moments are the things that really make this work. And makes it work to the point that it's in the right medium. If it's in a film, that would be the first thing that's cut.” And Cranston is right. Movies have to often get through a lot of plot with not a lot of time to allow for “smaller moments” that may be interesting but don’t move forward the master plot. Frequently this leads to films leaving very good scenes on the cutting room floor because, despite how good they are; films need to tell their story efficiently. Unlike tv shows, they don’t have 10 to 20 hour to tell their story. They may be have three if they’re really doing some hefty narrative lifting.Your Sister's Sister, on the other hand, keeps these "smaller moment" (and has them in abundance), and this for me is why the film is a treat.

It quickly establishes the plot: Mark Duplass’s Jack has had a shitty year and it’s left him really unstable. His friend Iris (played by Emily Blunt) suggests spending a couple of days in her family’s cabin in order to set himself straight. Realizing how badly he needs an isolated respite, Jack agrees and goes to the cabin. There he finds Iris’s sister Hannah (played by Rosmarie DeWitt), who has recently had a bad break up with her girlfriend of seven years. They drunkenly hook up, and unsurprisingly Iris shows up the next day to make things awkward and complicated.   

This plot in of itself isn’t majorly interesting or original, but the film allows for scene after scene where nothing happens but well-acted, understated, personal moments between characters. Having set itself up so swiftly from the start, the film dives into these moments with a feeling of authenticity, honesty, and heart (many of them feel improvised, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were). These scenes are so nicely observed and carried so strongly by the three leads that it engrosses you into the movie. 

My main beef with the film is a reveal at the start of the third act that threatens to derail the film. Yet somehow the film manages to play this to its advantage, allowing for still more “small”, well-observed, character specific moments. The reveal also leads to a nice, touching, and unexpected ending that may frustrate some, but I find appropriately open-ended. 

Your Sister’s Sister is the type of storytelling independent films often do so well. Intimate, personal, low key, but in many ways more meaningful than a big budget blockbuster. 

Grade: B+