Review of Our Little Sister (2015) by Walter P — 16 Dec 2016

If your desire is to be entertained by a movie with sassy dialog and mercurial personalities set in a house of cat-fighting women - skip this movie. Its soft spoken, gentle, thoughtful and quiet emotional style should leave you uplifted. Long after the theater lights come on these characters could remain with you because their grace and caring formed a cohesive as a family.

This Japanese language movie followed the lives of first three and then four sisters living together in their mother's rundown house. When the eldest sister attended her estranged late father's funeral she met, for the first time, her long rumored high school aged half-sister. As her visit concluded she opened her heart and spontaneously extended a sincere offer to her little sister to come live at the family house with her other sisters. Shortly afterwards her offer was accepted the youngest sister moved into the house whereupon she was welcomed warmly by her new sisters. I thought this is where the series of axe murders begin with each sister meeting her demise and the hands of the crafty and evil step-sister. Nope. At first it seems like there will be no action; well, that's correct, there isn't much. So if there are no sex scenes or gun play then why watch the movie? Because this movie is lightly meditative and gently nourishing: no witty dialog, clever one-liners or speeches. These were nice women with normal aspirations living in a low drama household with typical foibles and quirks, and with love for their family and others. Refreshing from the back stabbing, gossip riddled and tiresome antics of some other sisters we see on a narcissistic themed reality TV show. These sisters genuinely cared for one another and took care not to meddle in each other's lives but strove to guide, support and listen as they went through their simple daily lives and worked through their own difficulties. Watch it if you are in a quiet contemplative mood.