'Our Little Sister' is Chekhov lite but provokes smiles
Writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda鈥檚 鈥淥ur Little Sister鈥� is not for聽people craving sharp conflict in their movies. It鈥檚 pretty much a nonstop聽bliss-out, and so it may seem insubstantial by normal dramatic standards.
But some of those moments of bliss are so captivating that it seems聽churlish to go on about how the film is Chekhov lite 鈥撀�very聽lite.聽Insubstantiality when it鈥檚 as pleasurable as this surely has its own reason聽for being.
Three grown sisters all living together 鈥� Sachi (Haruka Ayase), a nurse聽at a local hospital having an affair with a married pediatrician; the fun-loving bank clerk Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa); and the sartorially聽challenged Chika (Kaho) 鈥� travel to the funeral for their father, who left聽the fold years ago to be with the woman, now dead, who was the mother聽of their teenage half-sibling, Suzu (Suzu Hirose). Living uneasily with her聽stepmother, Suzu, who is meeting her siblings for the first time, takes up聽their offer to move to their spacious seaside home in Kamakura, near聽Tokyo.
If you were maybe expecting that Suzu would enable a rift in the聽sisters鈥� lives, you don鈥檛 know Kore-eda. I don鈥檛 know that I鈥檝e ever seen聽quite as much smiling in one movie. Sachi,聽who is easily the most well-defined of the three older sisters, may have a fraught relationship with the聽pediatrician, but there is a worldliness, almost a contentment, about her聽acceptance of her fate. (This part is like Yasujiro Ozu lite.) She is, after聽all, the unstated matriarch of the brood and has her dignity to maintain.聽
Kore-eda has a gift for portraying goodness that is quite rare. He does聽so without a whisper of banality. When Suzu is riding on the back of a聽boy鈥檚 bicycle under a swirl of cherry blossoms, the close-up of her bliss is聽so joyful it鈥檚 practically ecstatic. I like this film much more than his last,聽the overly schematic melodrama 鈥淟ike Father, Like Son.鈥� Kore-eda may聽have moved away from the adventurous, mysterioso moodiness of early聽films like 鈥淎fter Life,鈥� but the smiles he provokes here 鈥� both with his聽characters and with us 鈥� are well-earned. Grade: B+ (Rated PG for thematic elements and brief language.)
