Review of Your Sister's Sister (2011) by Ryan H — 04 Aug 2012

Lynn Shelton's undeniably a talented director. Even though Your Sister's Sister goes down many paths in a story that we've seen before, it still entertained me with its human aspects. It opens up at a house where the closest friends of a man bond together and share memories.

What I assume is his best friend from college, Mike Birbiglia's character, stands up and tells a story about how he watched Hotel Rwanda then donated tons of his time to charity afterwords, and he was the best guy ever.

But for Jack that's not okay. That's not who he truly was. His brother was selfish and acted on selfish reasons just like everyone else. To praise him too much is more dishonorable than being honest.

He said when his brother was young he was a bully but changed because he saw Revenge of the Nerds and saw that the bullies don't get much in the end. Jack's become an alcoholic in the year that his brother has passed.

All of these are things we've seen before, but it has a sense of more honesty than previous films that I was still interested in what I was watching. It also helps that the cast was so charming. Mark Duplass, Emily Blunt, and Rosemary DeWitt were so great together.

Iris tells Jack that he needs to get away after his drunken speech and sends him to her father's cabin on an island in Washington. He goes because she's his best friend and he trusts her. He knows he's messed up.

That's the good part. We don't have to go through later how he has to be pushed out of his alcoholism. He knows he's using it as an escape and he wants it to end, but he's not sure if he's ready to push through his sadness to get to that point.

When he goes to the cabin he meets Iris's lesbian sister, Hannah. She came unexpectedly due to a breakup with her girlfriend of 7 years. That night Hannah and Jack drink together and drunkenly decide to have sex, only for the next day to have Iris come by and now they have a secret to hide.

The film doesn't play out like your typical rom-com. Yes, Iris is secretly in love with Jack so the stakes are heightened there. At the same time, there's not some goofy side scenes that are used just to make the audience laugh and see the characters come together through silly mishaps.

These are real people stuck in a cabin together that are all hiding something from each other. That's where this film shines. And with the improv we get plenty of real moments. Apparently they also shot this in 12 days, which completely floored me when I found out.

Baumbach tried shooting in a small time frame like that, but Highball turned out to be a mess. I think if Shelton and the cast were given more time they wouldn't have come up with some many great scenes.

I liked the conversation at the table about the vegan pancakes where Jack and Iris don't want to hurt Hannah's feelings because they're terrible. There probably wouldn't have been the great story Hannah tells about Iris and the boyfriend who told her to trim her bush.

I guess after a while I really get tired of seeing a scene just go directly to what they want the characters to talk about, but Your Sister's Sister moves at a steady pace so you can just enjoy spending time with these people.

It never forgets about the plot, but also never forces the film through because of the plot. It was refreshing for that. It's so that when the scene comes up when you find out Hannah poked holes in the condom everything finally begins to click.

That revelation scene not only tells the characters we all know what's going on, but then Iris's secret spills that she loves Jack which really kicks things out of order. She used to date Jack's brother, so he has to move past that to be with her.

The montage where the sister's come closer together and mend their relationship was pretty good. It was definitely a genre thing, but it wasn't terrible. I also didn't love the deception game between the three of them, but like I said it was done in a way that made it much better than anything I've seen done before that's in the same type of story as this.

I really want to go back and watch Lynn Shelton's previous work now. Humpday was great, and now this just lets me know she's got a style worth watching.