From Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda (“After Life,” “Still Walking”) comes “Our Little
Sister,” a sweet, sensitive family drama based on the popular manga “Umimachi Diary,” by Akimi
Yoshida. The story revolves around the lives of three sisters: responsible,
motherly Sachi (Haruka Ayase), fun-loving Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa),
and oddball Chika (Kaho), living together in their
grandmother’s house. We quickly learn that the girls have been looking after
and relying on one another for 15 years, ever since their father left their
mother to start a family with another woman, and their mother in turn abandoned
them soon after.
One day, the girls receive word that their father has passed
away, and decide they’d like to travel to attend the funeral. There, they meet
their teenaged half-sister Suzu (Suzu Hirose). Mature and remarkably self-assured for her age, Suzu
gets along well with her new sisters, and as they’re leaving to return home, Sachi impulsively invites Suzu to
come live with them. With her extension of kindness, the door is opened for
some long overdue sisterly bonding.
A simple slice of life, the plot of “Our Little Sister” is
low-stakes; there’s not a lot of incident to be found throughout its
(admittedly slightly too long) running time. But the film gradually builds in
weight as the sisters open up to welcome Suzu as part
of their family. Suzu’s presence isn’t always easy
for the sisters — after all, the young girl can’t help but be a sometimes
painful reminder of their father’s infidelities.
At times the anger, resentments, and grief the sisters have
never allowed themselves to express gradually bubble toward the surface,
opening wounds whose existence have never been acknowledged. But Koreeda is quick to emphasis that this process is the
critical first step toward healing, never letting those moments upend the
delicate mood he’s cultivated (a sequence involving two children riding a bike
through a “tunnel” made by rows of blossoming cherry trees is one of the most
joyous scenes I’ve seen on screen this year). Instead he focuses on breathing
life into a generous, quietly moving tale about family, responsibility, and the
ties that bind us together.
This article appears in Aug 17-23, 2016.
