Cast: Mark Duplass (Jack), Emily Blunt (Iris), Rosemarie DeWitt (Hannah), Mike Birbiglia (Al), Mike Harring (Tom, in photos).
(Note: this review has been cross-posted on Twitch.)
Shelton ’s two
previous films My Effortless Brilliance and Humpday focused on
male friendship and rivalry, and how this can often descend into a mano-a-mano
battle of wills, each side loath to back down from whatever emotional position
they choose to assume. Such a rivalry
forms the backbone of Your Sister’s Sister, but there are two
significant differences. First, the
relationship is between that of brothers, which serves to intensify this sort
of rivalry even further, due to the emotional and familial bond that comes into
play. But most importantly, this
relationship has already occurred offscreen before the film begins, and is
already at an end. This is because one
of the brothers had been dead for a year as the action commences; we are first
introduced to the surviving sibling, Jack (Mark Duplass), brooding in a corner
as a death anniversary gathering is happening, where the participants share
their memories of Jack’s brother Tom.
After Al (Mike Birbiglia) shares a fond memory of a night at the movies
with Tom watching Hotel Rwanda, an inebriated and agitated Jack dumps
cold water on the proceedings by giving a toast suggesting that Tom wasn’t
quite the saintly figure eulogized by his friends. As one can imagine, this act effectively ends
the celebration, bringing Tom’s friends down to Jack’s own depressed level.
Shelton ’s usual
method of making her films involves extensive work with the actors in which
they fully collaborate with the director in creating their characters,
inventing backstories, and using on-set improvisation to flesh out interactions
between them, resulting in often startling and unexpected moments. One great example is one scene in which Hanna
tells an embarrassing “bush story” about Iris. (To clarify, the particular bush
involved is not the horticultural kind.)
Iris gets revenge on Hannah for telling this story in front of Jack by
rather cruelly causing Hannah to unwittingly breach her vegan diet. As can be expected, all this results in a lot
of talk, and definitely much of this film, similarly to her others, is very
dialog-driven. But that is not all there
is to it, although there is great dialog here; Shelton doesn’t neglect dynamic
staging, and she clearly has thought much more about composition and showing
the relationship between her characters and their setting. I’ve already mentioned the cinematography,
and again I’d like to highlight the great contribution of cameraman Benjamin
Kasulke, whom Shelton has worked
with on two other films, who provides rich visual texture here.
There are many pleasures to be had in watching Your
Sister’s Sister, the fourth feature by writer/director Lynn Shelton (We Go Way Back, My Effortless Brilliance, Humpday), one of the
great highlights of Tribeca 2012. For
example, there is the nuanced and lived-in feel of the performances; the way
each scene is meticulously mined for maximum comic/dramatic value; and the
burnished cinematography that makes great use of the overcast atmosphere of the
Pacific Northwest to envelop everything we see in its
moody embrace. But beyond all this,
there is the great pleasure of seeing Shelton so beautifully build and expand
on her already impressive achievements, delivering (as always) the laughs that
come from her characters being placed in rather uncomfortable situations, but
adding an emotional weight that enhances both the comedic and serious moments
to brilliant effect.
This proves to be one breach of decorum too many for Iris
(Emily Blunt), Jack’s best friend and an ex-girlfriend of Tom’s. She stages an intervention with Jack after
the party, prescribing a period of exile at her family’s cabin on an island in
the Pacific Northwest .
Iris conceives this isolation for Jack as emotional rehab, to shake him
out the aimless, depressive slackerdom he has indulged in during the year
following his brother’s death. With
literally nothing else better to do, Jack accedes to Iris’ demands, biking out
to the cabin. However, this planned
solitude is not to be, as Jack unexpectedly comes upon Iris’ sister Hannah
(Rosemarie DeWitt) taking up residence there. (Even a simple set-up such as
this plays out in a hilariously awkward and nicely staged scene; Shelton
misses few opportunities to humorously reveal character.) Hannah is also using the cabin as a refuge
from her own emotional turmoil, having just ended a seven-year lesbian
relationship, drowning her sorrows that night in a bottle of tequila. That tequila is the catalyst for an ill-advised
(and also hilariously awkward) sexual encounter between the two, and a
complicated situation that becomes even more so when Iris decides to join Jack at
the cabin, unaware that her sister is also there. This sets into motion a chain of consequences
that reveals connections between the three (as well as their links to the
deceased Tom), in which hidden motives and desires, long suppressed, rise to
the surface.
The performance work by all three principal actors is
stellar. Mark Duplass (no slouch as a
director himself, along with his brother Jay) has played similar characters in
other films, but here he lends a sense of melancholy that is bubbling just
under the surface, which leads to an outpouring of emotion at the end of the
film that is quite emotionally moving.
Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt are never less than convincing as the
siblings who form a female counterpart, perhaps, to the brothers who have been
separated by death. Their emotional
trajectory eventually takes center stage, pushing the film out of its light
comedic territory into something weightier, though never humorless or overly
ponderous.
