Your Sister's Sister

Written and directed by Lynn Shelton; starring Emily Blunt (Iris), Roaemarie DeWitt (Hannah), and Mark Duplas (Jack); 90 minutes; 2012

A wake or funeral is an overused but sometimes functional way to open a film.  In “Your Sister’s Sister” a one year anniversary memorial service opened the film.  Jack’s angry outburst at the overly pious and hypocritical comments that his brother’s were making is refreshing and forecast good things to come in this wonderfully cogent second feature by writer/director Lynn Shelton. 

However, I had to wait for the better parts of this movie to arrive.  The next hour is filled with clever, self involved, but sometimes entertaining talking.  The dialog and thought process of all the characters seems ten years younger than the character’s actual ages.  This generation disconnect is disconcerting.   They were thirty-somethings talking and acting like young twenty-somethings.

Jack and Hanna make love, or screw, or I don’t know what it was, to set things in motion.  I never dreamed it was a trap that later actually contributes something to the narrative.

Hannah and her sister Iris both need Jack in entirely different ways.  Their dilemma finally unfolds and thrashes about in the last half hour and is worth the wait.  Spending an hour with these characters is interesting.  The over written or over improvised chit-chat evolves into insightful conversation later in the film.  I don’t care if it was scripted or improvised – maybe it was scrimprovised, which isn’t really new but in the last two years it has risen to a polished art form.  I take that back.  I don’t want to kill something by calling it polished.

The cinematography and editing is functional and basic.  The transitional images between scenes of beautiful greeting card images are out of place and seem like an after thought.  I loved the minimal musical score.  There were no contemporary tunes or orchestras to dictate emotion.   The production design consisted of wardrobe and whatever nature stirred up outdoors.  I liked everyone’s messy hair.

The “mumblecore” filmmakers of 2008-2010 didn’t like the label “mumblecore”.  I don’t blame them.  It is a horrible word.  I call the recent and not so recent scrimprovised indie films mumble-heart.  These films are heart warming, heart felt, and from the heart – hence mumble-heart.  Nobody really mumbles but the word mumble has a carryover meaning and cache from the recent past.

“Your Sister’s Sister” is good hearted and from the heart.  The conundrum that Jack, Hanna, and Iris fall into is the result of mistakes, selfishness, dishonesty, but mostly caused by a desire to love someone and be loved.  Words became useless in the culminating final act after all the dirty secrets were scattered on the table and Jack hit the road.  

At this wonderfully crafted emotional roadblock in the film, we enter a non-verbal chapter and watch Jack, Hanna, and Iris ponder and work through broken hearts, on their own, to reach forgiveness.  The characters vent and regroup without saying a word.  Then comes the climax marked by verbal clarity and economy, which is a tribute Lynn Shelton.  She exercised supreme restraint at the end, when it was absolutely necessary to do so.

“I’m tired of being dead,” Jack says.  “I’m in love with your sister.”  Jack and Iris – two best friends who are in love and finally admit it – hug and kiss and exchange I love you’s.  “Come here you sperm stealer,” Jack says to Hanna.   This is heart warming and a near perfect ending.  It sounds terrible in my description here.  You had to be there to understand this, so I encourage you to see the film.