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Our Little Sister, 2015
Sachi (Haruka Ayase), Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa), and Chika (Kaho) are three sisters living together. Their father has long since divorced their mother and taken up with another woman. When their father dies, the sisters meet their young half sister, Suzu (Suzu Hirose) and, sensing a strange vibe between her and her stepmother, invite her to live with them. As the sisters begin to bond, they each must deal with the emotional fallout from their childhood.
This film is by Hirokazu Koreeda, who directed three films I've seen and loved (After Life, Nobody Knows, and Shoplifters), and this is another one to add to the win pile.
Compared to the plots and stakes of the other films I have seen from Koreeda, this one is a bit more low-key. There is no literal danger to the characters, and the stakes are purely emotional. This is, for lack of a better word, a wonderfully gentle look at four basically nice people trying to reconcile the way that their past continues to impact their present.
The acting is very good across the board, and the central actresses have believable sisterly chemistry with each other. There is an ease to their interactions that is undercut with currents of emotion when they have to confront negative feelings that naturally arise. For example, when one of the sisters talks to a man who is considering leaving his wife, or when Suzu sees herself as a symbol of what disrupted the childhoods of her older sisters.
This isn't really a movie where problems are solved. There isn't closure here, so much as a lovely representation of how people can expand their already established lives to include someone new. How sometimes you have to fight your past in order to be able to enjoy the beauty of the present.
A really sweet, deeply felt film.
Our Little Sister, 2015
Sachi (Haruka Ayase), Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa), and Chika (Kaho) are three sisters living together. Their father has long since divorced their mother and taken up with another woman. When their father dies, the sisters meet their young half sister, Suzu (Suzu Hirose) and, sensing a strange vibe between her and her stepmother, invite her to live with them. As the sisters begin to bond, they each must deal with the emotional fallout from their childhood.
This film is by Hirokazu Koreeda, who directed three films I've seen and loved (After Life, Nobody Knows, and Shoplifters), and this is another one to add to the win pile.
Compared to the plots and stakes of the other films I have seen from Koreeda, this one is a bit more low-key. There is no literal danger to the characters, and the stakes are purely emotional. This is, for lack of a better word, a wonderfully gentle look at four basically nice people trying to reconcile the way that their past continues to impact their present.
The acting is very good across the board, and the central actresses have believable sisterly chemistry with each other. There is an ease to their interactions that is undercut with currents of emotion when they have to confront negative feelings that naturally arise. For example, when one of the sisters talks to a man who is considering leaving his wife, or when Suzu sees herself as a symbol of what disrupted the childhoods of her older sisters.
This isn't really a movie where problems are solved. There isn't closure here, so much as a lovely representation of how people can expand their already established lives to include someone new. How sometimes you have to fight your past in order to be able to enjoy the beauty of the present.
A really sweet, deeply felt film.