Competition review - OUR LITTLE SISTER by Hirokazu Koreeda

In Hirokazu Koreeda's Our Little Sister, in competition at the 68th Cannes Film Festival, four sisters sit around, work, fall in love, eat, sleep, have fun, make plum wine...and it's beautiful!

Koreeda's latest excellent work is an adaptation of the manga by Akimi Yoshida about three sisters; the wild Yoshi, the baby of the house Chika and the mature one Sachi, who are very close to one another and lead an almost utopian existance together in an old house in the countryside, supporting each other and making plum wine. 

This closeness also emerged from the situation they had to endure from a young age, when their father deserted them for another woman and their mother disappeared after a breakdown, leaving them to mostly fend for themselves particularly after the passing of their grandmother. Whilst attending their father's funeral at the start of the film, the three sisters meet their intelligent little stepsister named Suzu for the first time and they impulsively invite her to live with them.

From the get go, she seems to naturally fit into the group, more like a daughter than a sister . And from there on, Our Little Sister doesn't aim to tell a structured story, but rather take the viewers inside the world of the sisters by examining their relationships with their family and friends, their heartbreaks and habits of falling for the wrong men, their support for one another, prayers and sacred rituals, rural train journeys and meaningful or breezy conversations over meals.

All this is incredibly charming, and while the lack in sense of urgence may initially deceive the viewer with a slow start, eventually the development of Our Little Sister and the succession of the subtle and yet meaningful events that follows is infectuous, heartwarming and striking in its authenticity. 

Also worth noting are the usual sensibilities to the themes of the family drama that forever link Koreeda with Ozu, and the key element of female representation in cinema, an excercise in which Our Little Sister clearly proves to be a highlight of recent times, in glorious portrayal of the sensibilities, vulnerabilities and attractive nature of this sex. A further aid to the film is the female cast ensemble; they make their three dimensional and fundamentally universal characters even more likeable and fascinating.

Despite the authenticity and beautiful balance of drama and comedy, which correspond to the emotional rollercoaster ride that is life, Hirokazu Koreeda occasionally infuses his latest work with poetry, delighting viewers with moments of stunning cinematography - such as a bike ride through a cherry tree adorned road, or a sequence of summer fireworks in Japan - accompanied by a beautiful original score by Yoko Kanno. These sequences that are not at all obtrusive or overplayed, but rather occasionally sprinkled along this amazing journey in the life of these wonderful sisters as emotional releases that will easily result in goosebumps.