Your Sister’s Sister is the kind of movie in which people do a lot of sleazy things without you thinking less of them and actually hoping things work out so someone definitely did something right. Considering that the majority of the film is improvised, I think that a great deal of credit goes to the actors: Mark Duplass, Emily Blunt and Rosemarie Dewitt. A lot of things are done and said that in even a slightly different context, that character would be a villain, but I shockingly liked all the characters. I was completely engrossed and not judgey.
Your Sister’s Sister is about a guy that is floundering after the death of his brother so he accepts the invitation to use someone’s country home. The idea of the trip versus the reality clashes almost immediately when he realizes that biking is not the most rejuvenating way to start a weekend. Lynn Shelton, the director, brings a lot of humor by juxtaposing the bucolic, perfect surroundings with the discomfort of those in it. When he arrives, unexpectedly someone is already there. There are more surprises even until the denouement of the film, which is open-ended.
I received a kind of prurient satisfaction to being a fly on the wall while watching Your Sister’s Sister. Instead of uncomfortable tension because you know more than the characters at different points of the movie, you also feel off-kilter as you discover the characters’ motivations as you did. Like their surroundings, everything seems superficially one way, but the reality is messier and unwieldy like the bike ride. One character worries that she is a monster, and in another movie, each character would be, but in this film, people do questionable things for understandable reasons which only become clearly awful once the person takes into account the relationship and others’ feelings. There is a constant navigation of emotions: superficial wish fulfillment, discomfort, outrage, understanding also rooted in empathy based on your own flawed motivations then reconciliation.
Even though Your Sister’s Sister is a short film, it feels substantial. There is even something vaguely Biblical but less cataclysmic about this film. Siblings clash and love each other. There is some subtext of a psychological legacy of being a careless lover because of one’s father. In order to reject the legacy of failed family history and misguided attempts to erase bad relationships and memories, this movie demands truth and resolution. It also correctly prioritizes the order that the relationships need to be repaired. The unfolding of the film compares and contrasts the relationships before and after the revelations. The film’s goal wisely is not to return to the quixotic, but deceptively superficial past, i.e. return to Eden, which is impossible, but to incorporate and combine the textured complexity of humanity and make it on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Your Sister’s Sister is about mortality, living fully while doing as little harm as possible and recognizing that death is the only thing that should separate people. Everything else can be navigated.