My Skin­ny Sister

This impres­sive­ly detailed Swedish anorex­ia dra­ma is told from the per­spec­tive of Stel­la (Rebec­ka Joseph­son) whose old­er sis­ter Kat­ja (Amy Dea­sis­mont) is a com­pet­i­tive fig­ure skater. Young Stel­la is the pic­ture of age-appro­pri­ate whim­sy with her round face and mis­chie­vous ten­den­cies. Through her eyes, Kat­ja’s dis­or­dered symp­toms at first seem like weird sis­ter­ly behav­iour but they stack up until even this child can see that men­tal ill­ness has snatched the body that once housed her flesh and blood.

Lenken does not glam­or­ise anorex­ia. Kat­ja is beau­ti­ful and tal­ent­ed and the eat­ing dis­or­der erodes rather than enhances these qual­i­ties. We hear vom­it pelt­ing a toi­let bowl and the pan­ic that ris­es every meal-time. We see an affec­tion­ate tease of a sis­ter morph into a defen­sive mon­ster. Dea­sis­mont gives an intel­li­gent­ly hys­ter­i­cal per­for­mance as a teenag­er in a bad place, offer­ing enough of her character’s pre-ill­ness per­son­al­i­ty to show who is being lost. Rebec­ka Joseph­son has a face that gives a lit­tle away. The way she per­forms small actions – like see­ing an egg marked with her sister’s name, paus­ing for thought, and then eat­ing it any­way – has a puck­ish inno­cence that induces glee even as Katja’s anorex­ia worsens.

This is Lenken’s first fea­ture, although she explored sim­i­lar ter­ri­to­ry in a short set in an eat­ing dis­or­der facil­i­ty (2013’s Eat­ing Lunch). Lenken fills in the rest of the fam­i­ly with broad strokes – moth­er is a dis­tract­ed worka­holic, father is good-natured but blind. One won­ders how it will end as eat­ing dis­or­ders don’t lend them­selves to tidy nar­ra­tive res­o­lu­tions. Lenken makes a deci­sion that dri­ves home the fact that – even though Kat­ja is often front and cen­tre – this is a sto­ry about a young per­son find­ing her way out of an inher­it­ed famil­ial catastrophe.