Your Sister’s Sister (Shelton, 2011)
The passing of director Lynn Shelton in May 2020 – at the age of only 54 – was such a shock.
She was reaching her prime as a filmmaker with Sword of Trust in cinemas a year earlier, TV credits including episodes of GLOW, The Morning Show and Little Fires Everywhere, as well as directing her partner Marc Maron’s superb standup show for Netflix, End Times Fun in 2020.
Your Sister’s Sister is a superb example of her delicate but funny craft and I reviewed it for Capital Times back in 2012:
Your Sister’s Sister is a lovely little film for a big screen, an intimate three-hander featuring shifting relationships, secrets revealed and a warmth and generosity towards its characters that continues to captivate even when it is testing them.
Mark Duplass’s Jack has been depressed and bitter since the death of his brother and best friend Iris (Emily Blunt) offers him her family cabin for a few weeks so he can sort himself out. What she doesn’t know is that her sister, Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), has also chosen to use the cabin to get over her own recent romantic breakup.
Jack’s arrival surprises Hannah but they both get over it fairly quickly with the help of a bottle of tequila and some alcohol-encouraged mutual attraction. When Iris arrives the next day to check on things they agree to keep their drunken tryst a secret but – as they should in any well-plotted comedy – their lies grow until they are basically unsustainable and push – as they say – must come to shove.
Writer-director Lynn Shelton has a knack for this sort of intimate dilemma-driven drama. I loved Humpday (which also featured schlubby everyman Duplass) when it screened in the festival in 2009, but this film takes her handmade, mumblecore, improvised style and adds a few big screen aesthetics. It actually feels like an elegantly scripted and carefully constructed item and the only way that a largely improvised process can work that well is when the bones are really good to start with (apart from a fairly extended but probably necessary explanation of why Blunt has a British accent and her sister doesn’t).
Also reviewed that week were the Sarkies’ brothers Kiwi black comedy Two Little Boys (aka Deano and Nige’s Best Last Day Ever) and the Scandi-thriller Jo Nesbø’s Jackpot.
Where to watch Your Sister’s Sister
Aotearoa: Streaming on Māori+ (free with ads) or digital rental from AroVision
Australia: Streaming on Stan
Canada: Streaming on AMC+ and SundanceNow
USA: Streaming on AMC+, Paramount+ and Fubo
UK: Streaming on SundanceNow
Further listening
You can listen to last Friday’s Short-Cuts session on RNZ Nights here, that’s me chatting with fill-in host Todd Zaner. I cover The Zone of Interest and Drive-Away Dolls (in cinemas), Orion and the Dark on Netflix and TVNZ+ picking up the classic TV series Freaks & Geeks.
Seeing Two Little Boys pop back into my consciousness, I recall the interview we did with Robert and Duncan Sarkies for the old Cinematica podcast. I’ve archived all of the episodes here and sometimes wonder whether I should be recreating a podcast feed for all those abandoned episodes so that they might be found more easily.
