Romance and sibling rivalry compete for centre stage in Your Sister's Sister, a delightfully deft comedy from filmmaker Lynn Shelton (Humpday).
It's all about brothers and sisters.
The movie opens with a memorial celebration for a guy who has died young. When his brother Jack (Mark Duplass) gets up to speak, it's obvious that bro is having some issues with mourning. The dead man's girlfriend, Iris (Emily Blunt) insists that Jack travel to her father's isolated cabin, where he can be alone and get his head straight. It's the perfect retreat.
When Jack gets to the cabin, he is surprised to find that Iris's sister Hannah is also staying there. Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt) has just left her lover and ended a seven-year relationship. Jack and Hannah drink a bucket of tequila, talk all night and stumble into bed together; then Iris turns up unexpectedly the next day, and hidden emotions and agendas are revealed.
Your Sister's Sister is a small, lovely story about the relationship among three people. It's most engaging in its depiction of the bond between Iris and Hannah, half-sisters with a father whose weaknesses have made his children particularly close to one another. The sibling bond is also examined, in a roundabout way, in the changing relationship between Jack and Iris: when your lover dies, how taboo are your feelings for his brother?
The movie poses an interesting moral question about responsibility. The connection between Iris and Hannah is such that women in the audience will know how the story will wrap up. Your Sister's Sister substitutes a fey ending for a trite one, but never mind -- everyone acquits himself nicely. This is a story for grown-ups brought to life by superb performances.
