Mark Reviews Movies: MY LITTLE SISTER

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 14, 2021

The screenplay for My Little Sister, written by co-directors Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond, puts us right into the middle of a lot. As a result, we spend too much time, perhaps, trying to catch up to most of the emotional connections and various problems.

Lisa (Nina Hoss), a once-promising playwright, hasn't written in some time. Her marriage to Martin (Jens Albinus) has become strained, because the focus is always on what he wants from life and the relationship. Her relationship with her mother (played by Marthe Keller) is a difficult one, because the mother, a most difficult woman, has so many expectations for how her children should live and treat her.

At the top of the list, though, is Lisa's relationship with her twin brother Sven (Lars Eidinger), the only person to whom she can truly relate and share her feelings. He was recently diagnosed with leukemia. That, we learn, is when she stopped writing. That's likely when she realized how much the other people in her life don't really care what she wants or needs. That, essentially, is when everything fell apart for Lisa.

The movie starts shortly after, with Sven leaving a hospital in Berlin after a bone marrow transplant and Lisa determined to ensure his recovery. Sven doesn't make it easy. He's an actor who desperately wants to return to the stage, but the show's director David (Thomas Ostermeier), who is also Lisa's ex, wisely worries about the idea.

We watch the mother reject her son, because seeing him ill is "too hard" for her. Sven ends up staying with Lisa, Martin, and their two kids at their home in a Swiss mountain town. Everything, save for Lisa's devotion to Sven, collapses, meaning Lisa finally has the chance to decide what she wants from her life.

The performances from Hoss, restraining all of the pain and anger as Lisa tries to stay strong for everyone in her sphere, and Eidinger, showing the physical and psychological decline of severe illness, are strong. This story is at its most effective and affecting when it concentrates on that bond and shows Sven's deteriorating health with fairly blunt honesty, but it's not really a story about that. My Little Sister is framed more as the story of an awakening, and in the midst of such obvious agony, it ultimately feels a bit too simple.

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