Your Sister's Sister [film review]

* Written for Toronto Screen Shots

"Lynn Shelton". Get used to hearing the name of the Seattle-based writer/director/producer/actor, because if her newest work is any indication, she's got a very bright filmmaking career ahead of her. Her fourth film and the follow-up to 2009's acclaimed Humpday, Your Sister's Sister is one of the smartest, most engaging relationship dramas (laced with charming humour) I've ever seen. Yes, it's that good.

The story doesn't exactly jump off the page, perhaps reading as the type of standard chick flick material that audiences have seen over and over again, with a subdued tone and pace that some viewers might find challenging. The magic in the film lies with the honesty and naturalism that Shelton derives from her characters and their interplay, delivered by equally outstanding performances from the three leads who improvised about 75% of their words. Emily Blunt plays Iris, the best friend of Jack (played by Mark Duplass) and the former girlfriend of Jack's brother, who died roughly a year before the movie begins. Jack, who's unemployed, just can't seem to get out of his mourning funk, so Iris encourages him (practically forces him, actually) to spend some time at her father's cabin on an island in Puget Sound. Jack takes her up on the offer and, upon arriving at the remote cabin, finds a houseguest already there. That would be Hannah, Iris' sister (played by Rosemary DeWitt), who is also seeking a little solitude to clear her head after just ending a seven year lesbian relationship. Mix a bottle of tequila with some bad judgement and the pair end up having awkward sex. The following day, Iris unexpectedly shows up, thus setting in motion the complex triangular dynamic that forms the core of the film.

Blunt, DeWitt, and Duplass have an immediate, winning chemistry with each other and they'd better. Aside from its first fifteen or so minutes, the film almost exclusively features just the three actors on screen and most of that time is spent within the four cabin walls, which gives the film a very intimate theatrical feel. DeWitt and Blunt, in particular, find a familiarity and comfort with one another that successfully sells us on their sisterhood, despite the curious fact that Iris has an English accent and Hannah an American one. I loved that Shelton holds off on revealing the reason for the accent discrepancy until well into the film, as the puzzling detail just kind of hangs there in an intriguing and only mildly nagging way. It might seem like an odd creative choice on Shelton's part, but it actually stems from the fact that Rachel Weisz, a Brit, was originally supposed to play Hannah before pulling out at the last minute. DeWitt, usually one of the best things in anything I've ever seen her in (especially her work on Showtime's United States Of Tara), deserves even more credit for her performance, considering the lack of preparation she had before jumping into the movie's lean twelve day shooting schedule. Along with Shelton's work, another major revelation taken from the film is Duplass, who I'd never heard of. He proves more than capable of handling the movie's demanding dramatic material, while also demonstrating a real flair for its comedic requirements via his goofy charm. And it turns out that like his director, Duplass also writes, directs, and produces films with his brother, Jay. Their latest movie, Jeff, Who Lives At Home, premiered at this year's TIFF.

The film's soundtrack deserves special mention. Composed by Vince Smith (who handled all aspects of sound recording and design on this production), it meshes nicely with Shelton's visuals featuring the scenic Pacific Northwest, and his score plays a key role during an extended montage sequence at the end of the movie that has next to no dialogue. The sequence is a bit of a gamble on Shelton's part, but it's nicely put together and doesn't sap the film's momentum as the story comes to its conclusion.

Your Sister's Sister was picked up for distribution at TIFF by IFC Films for a summer 2012 release. Hopefully, a movie this quiet and clever can find an audience amidst the clatter of the studio tentpole offerings. Those who do discover it will be treated to a film that wasn't just the best thing I saw at the festival, but the best film I've seen this year.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★

Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding [film review]

Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding finds Jane Fonda taking on just her third acting role in the last 21 years in director Bruce Beresford's latest film. It's not difficult to see what drew Fonda to the showy character of Grace, an eccentric hippie that allows her to send up her liberal Hanoi Jane image. What is hard to figure out is why she pulled herself out of semi-retirement for a dramedy that has little else going for it, as Grace inhabits a cinematic world that surrounds her with dull characters and uninventive storylines.

The plot: Diane, a repressed, conservative New York City lawyer (played by Catherine Keener) separates from her husband of 20 years and decides to take her two kids Zoe and Jake (played by Elizabeth Olsen and Nat Wolff, respectively) to visit her mother (Fonda's character) in Woodstock, New York. Diane and Grace haven't spoken in 20 years, an estrangement apparently stemming from an incident where Grace tried to sell an attendee at her daughter's wedding some pot. Seems a little harsh, but okay. We know Grace is wacky because she lets chickens stay inside her house and still lives like the 60's never ended. Naturally, Diane's kids come to love their cool new grandmother because she represents everything their uptight mother isn't. The gang's earnestly transformative trip finds Diane and Grace trying to heal their relationship, while Diane and the kids also all laughingly set off on their own romantic adventures, as Diane hooks up with a carpenter/singer-songwriter played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Zoe with a butcher played by Chace Crawford, and Jake with a diner waitress played by Marissa O'Donnell.

Joseph Muszynski's and Christina Mengert's script suffers greatly from an unimaginative overreliance on the theme of opposites to create dramatic tension. That might be fine if they played this card once or twice, but they go to the well three times with it in pairing characters with diametrically opposed beliefs and ways of life. Along with the mother/daughter relationship we also have Zoe, a staunch vegetarian, falling for a guy who slices and dices dead animals for a living, and Diane fights her ingrained repression (and the fact she's mere days removed from leaving her husband) as she falls for Morgan's free spirited character. By the way, Morgan's tone-deaf singing performances in this film are alone enough for me not to recommend it. The other major problem with the script is the reunion of Diane and Grace and the introduction of the kids to their grandmother for the first time. There's some mild awkwardness, but other than that it just feels completely devoid of any emotion or basis in reality.

Fonda's performance is one of the few redeeming parts of the film, even if Grace does veer somewhat towards being a caricature of an aging bohemian. Despite being 73, Fonda still brings a sexiness and energy to her work that's a good fit for her mischievous character - her "cock block" line is one of the funniest I've heard in a film this year. Otherwise, Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding disappointingly plays it safe and straight up.

Rating: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆

The Lady [film review]

Director Luc Besson steps out of his comfort zone with The Lady, a biopic about Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese politician who spent almost 15 years under house arrest in her family compound for leading a democratic uprising that opposed Burma's oppressive and corrupt government. Best known for high energy movies like La Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element, and Leon: The Professional, Besson reins in the action for this expansive drama, which surprisingly focusses as much (if not more) on Suu Kyi's relationship with her family as her political history. In performances sure to generate Oscar buzz, Michelle Yeoh plays the titular character and David Thewlis plays her husband Michael Aris, a professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at the University of Oxford.

Suu Kyi lived abroad in England for most of her adult life, where her and Aris raised two boys, until returning to her native country in 1988 to tend to her sick mother. Once there, she is approached by locals to lead efforts to form a new government that will bring democracy to the country, ending the iron-handed rule and human rights abuses of the leaders in power. This is one area of the film where the exposition felt clumsily handled; it's jarring and confusing when Suu Kyi rapidly goes from seemingly being a simple Oxford housewife to the high profile leader of a politically chaotic country. No background is given on her adult years before her return to Burma (was she politically active while in England?) and there's no real probing into her motivations or qualifications for taking on such a weighty and dangerous position, other than the fact that her father aspired to be a figure of change in the country before he was killed by opposing military forces when Suu Kyi was a child. That was obviously a factor, but a deeper exploration of this critical point in Suu Kyi's life is needed, especially when we see the massive sacrifices she makes for her beliefs (she misses years of her family's lives and is unable to be with her husband as he fights and ultimately succumbs to cancer in 1999). Thewlis gives an excellent performance as Aris, who devotedly shared in his wife's struggle and unremittingly fought for her freedom.

Yeoh delivers a dignified, compassionate portrait of Suu Kyi, but is handcuffed somewhat by Besson's and screenwriter Rebecca Frayn's rather pedestrian summation of her struggle. Despite its lengthy running time (145 minutes), the film feels rushed and fails to resonate quite as deeply that a story as remarkable as Suu Kyi's should. Yeoh met the politician in Burma last December, a month after Suu Kyi was finally freed, and attempted to visit her again in June while on a break from shooting The Lady in Thailand, but was deported and blacklisted by Burmese officials.

I'd never heard of Suu Kyi until U2 brought her name to a wider audience with the song "Walk On" and during brief segments about her at every show on their last couple of tours, for which Besson gives the band a couple of shout-outs in his film, however awkward they are (one of Suu Kyi's sons wears a shirt from the band and one of their songs plays on the soundtrack). The Lady, although flawed, is a well-intentioned effort that will bring further attention to her extraordinary life and the ongoing fight for human rights in Burma.

Rating: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆