Our Lit­tle Sis­ter – first look review

After ris­ing to promi­nence with a diverse string of sober­ing and spir­i­tu­al­ly curi­ous mas­ter­pieces (rang­ing from the grim inquiry of Maborosi to the lucid neo-real­ism of Nobody Knows and the divine poet­ry of After Life), the most glob­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant Japan­ese direc­tor of his gen­er­a­tion turned a cor­ner and nev­er looked back.

A man who’s always skewed towards the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal – even 2008’s Still Walk­ing, an explic­it homage to the films of Yasu­jiro Ozu, was based on mem­o­ries of his own fam­i­ly – Hirokazu Koree­da has spent the last decade active­ly striv­ing for the per­son­al, using his films as a con­duit to bet­ter under­stand the rela­tion­ships in his life. Since the birth of his daugh­ter, his projects nat­u­ral­ly began to focus on chil­dren, the hope they com­mand (I Wish) and the love they require (Like Father, Like Son).

Pri­ori­tis­ing heart over hard­ship now that the stakes are more pal­pa­ble for him, Koreeda’s recent projects have been sweet to a fault (arguably even sac­cha­rine). The kids he casts are cute, the world they inhab­it is for­giv­ing, and the future they move towards is bright. With Our Lit­tle Sis­ter, Koree­da grad­u­ates to a tween pro­tag­o­nist, but uses her to anchor his sweet­est film to date – if he wants to cre­ate some­thing any gen­tler, he’s going to have to start man­u­fac­tur­ing pillows.

Fold­ing the wist­ful banal­i­ty of Ozu’s fam­i­ly dra­mas into the tight­ly woven tata­mi mats of Kon Ichikawa (whose The Makio­ka Sis­ters this film explic­it­ly ref­er­ences with its title, Koree­da eschew­ing the name of the ongo­ing Aki­mi Yoshi­da man­ga from which he’s adapt­ed it), Our Lit­tle Sis­ter weath­ers as much con­flict as a light sum­mer breeze. It begins with the ladies of the Koda clan, Sachi (Haru­ka Ayase), 29, Yoshi­no (Masa­mi Naga­sawa), 22, and Chi­ka (Kaho), 19, who share a charm­ing house in Ozu’s rest­ing place, the sea­side city of Kamaku­ra. When their estranged father dies, the girls trav­el to his ver­dant vil­lage in order to pay their respects and meet 13-year-old Suzu (Suzu Hirose), the young half-sis­ter they’ve only heard about sec­ond­hand. By the time the Koda sis­ters return home, there are four of them.

From there, the film set­tles into the rhythms of real life, the sib­lings apply­ing a bare­ly per­cep­ti­ble pres­sure to each other’s sore spots as the sea­sons change against the back­drop of the expres­sive Kamaku­ra land­scape. Sachi, who ini­tial­ly oper­ates with a mater­nal stiff­ness that belies her age, is often frus­trat­ed with the more juve­nile behav­ior of her younger sis­ters, who still have their own mis­takes to make (the implo­sion of Yoshino’s love life is in progress as the film begins). Chi­ka has a sweet rela­tion­ship with a local moun­taineer, whose basic decen­cy spills across the sto­ry. Suzu, most impor­tant­ly, is our eyes and ears, and her joy at being accept­ed into this fam­i­ly in media res is both pure and pal­pa­ble. Suzu’s age, also, hints towards the ten­der sense of tran­sience that back­bones so much of Koreeda’s work, and Our Lit­tle Sis­ter in par­tic­u­lar, as her rapid mat­u­ra­tion makes every pass­ing day feel like the start of a lost idyll.

The film is sel­dom forced to con­tend with any­thing resem­bling a dra­mat­ic ques­tion, and the few that are posed – will Sachi, whose true char­ac­ter is revealed by her work with ter­mi­nal patients, move to Amer­i­ca with her mar­ried boyfriend? – are almost imme­di­ate­ly put to bed. Life goes on, Koree­da reg­u­lars dot the scenery, and the warmest per­son in town slow­ly suc­cumbs to the num­ber one cause of death in vin­tage melo­dra­mas: a can­cer that only seems to afflict its vic­tim when they’re off-screen. Rather than plot threads or sweep­ing nar­ra­tive arcs, Koree­da focus­es his atten­tion instead on the plea­sures of fire­works, fish spread on toast, and the excite­ment of a giant insect unex­pect­ed­ly hop­ping into a bathroom.

Yes, Koree­da argues, these girls won’t be in that house for­ev­er and their lives will amount to very lit­tle on a cos­mic scale, but that’s all the more rea­son to delight in their pres­ence while they’re here. If Our Lit­tle Sis­ter is a slice-of-life sto­ry, it’s cut with a but­ter knife and spread with care into every nook and cran­ny. You could take a cat­nap or two and hard­ly miss a thing, and that’s at the crux of the film’s unde­ni­able appeal, the unique appeal of a film adapt­ed from a sto­ry that it’s author has no inten­tion of finishing.

Our Lit­tle Sis­ter bare­ly makes a splash while you watch it, but it’s imme­di­ate­ly clear that it’s small move­ments could rip­ple for years to come, and that Koreeda’s lat­est could become a par­tic­u­lar­ly calm ver­sion of those movies like Yi Yi or Meet Me in St. Louis that peo­ple return to for years on end, if only to mea­sure their dis­tance from them. Becom­ing a dad may have changed Koree­da, but doesn’t everything?