The films of Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda all border on schmaltz and insignificance. But his deft hand and simple storytelling consistently reveal deep truths about life and family with delicate nuance. His latest film, “Our Little Sister,” offers the same tender spirit and warm glow with a perceptive look at the ups and downs that face the modern young woman.
The Kôda sisters, Sachi, Yoshino and Chika, all live together in a house on the hill just outside the city, and “Our Little Sister” concerns how this close-knit group comes to add one more sister to their family. Upon their father’s death, the sisters travel to visit their stepmom and come to learn they have a teenage sister named Suzu (Suzu Hirose). It was Suzu, not their stepmom, who cared for their father when he was ill, and in an act of kindness, they invite Suzu to live with them.
When they ask, you can see the apprehension in Suzu’s face, but also the excitement. This shy, formal girl will now have a real family, some role models and close friends she can admire, and in one of the film’s cornier turns, Suzu runs and waves after the sisters’ train, shedding a single tear down her cheek as some guitar music delicately strums.
Such is the tone Kore-eda strikes in most of his films, and if you can get past the feeling that these movies are not only warm and fuzzy, but also somewhat slight as drama, he has an innate understanding of family relationships, etiquette and how people navigate the daily challenges in their lives. It’s his fine hand behind the camera that gives “Our Little Sister” its spark. Many of these shots feel lifted straight out of an Ozu film, and Kore-eda has a beautiful sense for arranging all three sisters within one loving pose. It’s easy to get past the film’s sentiment namely because he executes the story so simply and peacefully.
But compared to his last film “Like Father, Like Son,” which posed a complex “what if” scenario and charted how families would respond to such a shake-up, “Our Little Sister” feels far more ordinary and relatable, and a welcome representation of women of many stripes. Sachi (Haruka Ayase) is the oldest and behaves like a mother toward Suzu, but while she acts professional and matronly, the film recognizes her need to prioritize her own life and actually be a sister, not a mom. Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa) has to juggle some poor romantic choices, and Chika (Kaho) needs most of all to become an adult and recognize some dreams beyond her job at the shoe store.
“Our Little Sister” doesn’t make any grand or dramatic changes in any of these characters’ lives, but it reckons with their personalities and will inspire you to look inward at your own relationships, memories and callings. Their stories, along with a few other supporting characters at a local diner, arguably detract from Suzu, who introduces a wedge into this family in good ways and bad, big ways and small.
At first their issues are limited to Suzu calling her sisters by their formal names, but it slowly escalates into wondering just how much they can trust this young girl they’ve let into their lives. And Suzu too has to come out of her shell. In one scene she accidentally gets drunk on plum wine and blurts out that she hates her parents. She’s burdened with the guilt of knowing that her birth broke up the Kôda family, and in tiny ways Kore-eda shows that his style and his themes aren’t all rosy; at times they do have an acid tongue.
For as slight as “Our Little Sister” can seem, Kore-eda packs a lot of drama and intimacy into small moments. It arguably has a few too many endings, with the film returning to the well for some saccharine touches more than needed, but it would be easy to spend a lifetime with these four sisters.
3 ½ stars