A terrific and beautifully-shot melodrama full of warmth and pathos as Kore-eda invites and immerses us into the lovely world of three adult sisters and their much younger half-sister who has come to join them.
Review #2,644
Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda
2015 | Japan | Drama | 127 min | 1.85:1 | Japanese
PG (passed clean) for thematic elements and brief language
Cast: Haruka Ayase, Masami Nagasawa, Kaho Suzu Hirose, Ryo Kase
Plot: Three sisters live together in Kamakura. When their father—absent for 15 years—dies, they travel to the countryside for his funeral and meet their teenage half-sister. Bonding quickly with the orphaned Suzu, they invite her to live with them and a new life of joyful discovery begins for them.
Awards: Nom. for Palme d’Or (Cannes)
International Sales: Gaga
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Broken Family, Sisters
Narrative Style: Slightly Complex
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Slightly Arthouse
Viewed: Projector X: Picturehouse
Spoilers: No
Japanese cinema is no stranger to movie titles about sisters. Think Mizoguchi’s Sisters of the Gion (1936) or Ichikawa’s The Makioka Sisters (1983).
In Our Little Sister, Hirokazu Kore-eda fashions one of his most inviting films as this terrific melodrama immerses us into the lovely world of three adult sisters and their much younger half-sister who has come to join them after the death of their father.
It is a testament to Kore-eda’s ability that a film bookended by funerals would still radiate such warmth and quiet joy. Within a matter of minutes, the story is efficiently set up and the quartet of characters is established.
What happens after is a gamut of emotions, from the bliss of hosting a ‘familial stranger’ in an ancestral house to the bitterness of past family relations surfacing.
Suzu Hirose, the breakout star who would work with Kore-eda again on The Third Murder (2017), plays the half-sister (also named Suzu), whose fresh start with her new family sees her navigating almost effortlessly friends in school and soon-to-be loved ones.
“Let’s live together, the four of us.”
Ever so courteous and respectful of her elders, Hirose’s delicate performance belies her character’s sporty demeanour (she’s great with football!).
In one sequence, she learns from her sisters how to pick and ferment plums to produce plum wine, an age-old family tradition. In another, she rides as a pillion on a boy’s bicycle as they swing by tree after tree of cherry blossoms, feeling the bliss of youth and perhaps the first tinglings of love.
These are the kinds of fulfilling moments that Kore-eda has regularly shown that he is very good at, putting us in Suzu’s point-of-view while sharing with us her feelings of reassurance.
Our Little Sister is also one of Kore-eda’s most beautifully-shot films—a Letterboxd review described it as a live-action Ghibli, “stripped of the more fantastical elements, but just as animated with heart.”
It’s true, such is the picturesque scenes of their quaint Japanese town, accompanied by a lush soundtrack with strains of Mahler’s 5th Symphony.
Grade: A-
Trailer:
Music:
Eternality Tan 
[…] Our Little Sister (2015) […]
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