Our Little Sister

Hirokazu Kore-eda's films are perennial Official Cannes selections and for good reason, Kore-eda films are consistently evocative and thought provoking dramas, and his latest, Our Little Sister (2015) is no exception. This story of three sisters living in an old house in Kamakura is informed by the past masters of cinema and Ozu in particular who used Kamakura as a location of one of his best films, Late Spring. This story is about a father who strays from his family and starts a new family and when his wife dies he starts yet another marriage bringing the daughter of his second marriage with him. We later learn that their mother also decides to start a new life leaving her three daughters behind to be brought up by her mother and the oldest daughter Sachi (Haruka Ayase), a serious minded nurse. The other two daughters are somewhat caricatures-the fun-loving Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa) and the youngest, the free spirited Chika (Kaho). However, I think both actress added something to to their roles to escape the caricature and present their characters as more fully rounded people. The drama of the film surfaces first when the father dies and they learn they have a mature half sister, Suzu (Suzu Hirose), whose mother died before their father's third marriage. Sachi spontaneously asks her to live with them in their old family house in Kamakura. I suppose it would have been more Ozu-esque had those funeral scenes been cut, but the old house allows for Ozu-esque framing. Another plot device is whether or not Sachi will leave the house and join her doctor lover in America while he attends a research institute. So instead of the possible marriage of a daughter (in the Ozu story style)-we have the possible marriage of a sister, but it results in a feminist statement when she decides to join the terminal care unit of the hospital and live on with her sisters in the old house. It is a deliberately paced, but moving, family drama that shows that Kore-eda is still the main torch bearer of classic Japanese cinema today.