‘Little Sister’ deserves your loving embrace
If you have not yet come under the spell of the work of Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Koreeda (“Still Walking,” “Like Father, Like Son”), here is your chance to catch up. “Our Little Sister” is another captivating family drama from Koreeda, this one about three 20-something sisters living in the seaside city of Kamakura.
There’s maternal sibling Sachi Koda (Haruka Ayase), wild-child middle sister Yoshino Koda (Masami Nagasawa) and offbeat youngest Chika Koda (Kaho). The story is about what happens to them after they invite their “little sister,” actually their 14-year-old half-sister, Suzu Asano (Suzu Hirose), whom they meet at their father’s funeral, to live with them in the big old house they inherited when their mother left them to fend for themselves.
Yes, it is a kind of Cinderella-times-four tale. But the young women carry the burden of their memories of their parents, some of them not very pleasant. Suzu, for example, was left to care for her dying father when her stepmother Yoko left him to deal with his final illness by himself. Older people are selfish, hurtful and unpredictable in “Our Little Sister.”
Sachi is a dedicated nurse who gets the opportunity to run a new terminal care ward in the city. She is having an affair with an unhappily married doctor (Ryohei Suzuki), and it seems to be going nowhere good for her. Yoshino, who works in a bank and likes to drink, is having an affair with a feckless young man who borrows money from her. Nineteen-year-old Chika works in a Kamakura sports equipment and apparel shop. The older sisters have dim memories of their father, who left them 15 years earlier. Chika, who is a bit of loner, barely remembers him.
“Our Little Sister,” which is based on the 2007 manga “Umimachi Diary” by Akimi Yoshida (“Banana Fish”), is novelistic in its character development, as visually striking as you might imagine a film based on a graphic novel to be and firmly planted in the setting of the manga. In one beautiful scene, a boy who likes Suzu takes her on his bike to a cherry blossom tunnel. Suzu flourishes in her new home and school, where she joins the soccer team.
Like the plum wine made from the fruit of the family’s backyard fruit tree, the story is steeped in the passage of time, rich and complex. It will include the maternal, middle-aged owner-chef of a local fish restaurant who has no children of her own, faces difficult challenges and loves the Koda girls (how these women love to eat). Ordinary housework takes on a ritualistic, prayer-like quality. The girls pay ancestral homage before the family butsudan. A funeral, one of the film’s many memorial services, gives the finale a bittersweet quality.
But you cannot help but feel hopeful as the sisters walk happily together along the strand, talking about the future.
(“Our Little Sister” contains some mature themes and brief language.)