Review of Our Little Sister (2015) by Prach P — 11 Aug 2015

Hirokazu Koreeda's latest film, "Our Little Sister?" (or "Umimachi Diary?") is about three sisters in a small Japanese town who have just welcomed a teenage half-sister into their home and their lives.

I think it's another excellent film by Koreeda, but I prefer his two other films, "Still Walking?" and "Like Father, Like Son (2013 film)?". "Our Little Sister" is much lighter than those two films - lighter in the sense that it deals with less hurtful, less oppressive, less devastating relationships. But it is also, I think, less realistic.

To me, the characters in "Our Little Sister" are a little too nice to be totally realistic. They're people full of secret grievances, and yet we almost never see those grievances come to fore in their interactions with others. Are real people so nice? We all need emotional outlets, and sometimes suppressed feelings leak out where we never intend them too. That doesn't seem to happen with characters in "Our Little Sister" at all. The characters seem too emotionally mature, too well-composed, too nice, to be real.

I also think that the film hides too much from us. We know that a character has an extra-marital affair with another character. But that relationship is never elaborated in any detail at all. Neither is the relationship between the Suzu (the little sister) and her mother, which is crucial for us in understanding her development.

This is not to say that Koreeda's characters in "Our Little Sister" are caricatures at all. Koreeda's standard in character-building in incredibly high. His characters always have depth, and that's true with "Our Little Sister" too. I just think the characters in this latest film are slightly less deep, less realistic, than in his best movies.