This month's feature is not neo noir. It's a full-blown chic flick called Your Sister's Sister. No, the title isn't explained during the film. It centers on two women who are half-sisters, sharing the same father but different mothers.
The plot is complicated and not very credible. It features far too many scenes of people sitting down and having heart-to-heart conversations like people just don't have in real life along with some ridiculous twists and turns ultimately winding up with a happy ending that would have made Walt Disney puke but that many critics loved because it has two sisters, one straight, one lesbian and one wimp living together living happily ever after.
If you are an upper-middle-class white person, you will recognize the set up. A guy is still depressed a year after his brother's death. His best female-friend ( but not girlfriend) suggests he go up to a vacation home that she describes as "my father's". Now this is a situation rich with potential for unusual couplings and that is exactly what happens for he arrives at the cottage to find the second sister, a lesbian who has just broken up with her lover, and a bottle of tequila. Tequila is consumed and the two end up in bed.
The guy is a complete dweeb. He is angry, bitter, unemployed and he finishes in less than 40 seconds. It wasn't good for her. She seems surprisingly comfortable with this however.
The problem though is that it is impossible to see why any woman would find this guy attractive. When his bike breaks down later in the film, he has a temper tantrum that would shame a three-year-old boy.
Let me make a wild suggestion, though, that this movie isn't really about what it appears to be about. Just as a lot of teen horror movies are really about sex, this is really a movie about women remaining friends even in the face of sexual relationships which challenge best-friend-forever friendships because they are so much more intimate. There is a whole lot of complication and other stuff camouflaging the thing, but that is the real subject. And that is why it is such a pack of lies. In real life, best-friends-forever are always rapidly surpassed and supplanted by sexual love.
You can see why it hurts. When one ceases to be a child, one puts away childish things but it isn't easy to do so. It's not that you can't still be friends but the nature of the friendship changes. And it is that which this movie sets out to deny.
It's not a movie that attempts to confront any deep issues about this. It pretends to be doing so by creating all sorts of awkward moments but it never shows how people get over awkward conflicts. It simply says that this can happen and that then everything can somehow be made okay somehow. Exactly how that is is hard to say but it apparently involves lots of walking around the beautiful scenery outside the vacation home while acoustic guitar music plays on the soundtrack.
It's one of the marks of chic flicks that there is no real moral responsibility. The guy is not in a relationship with either sister. He's just a friend so there is no reason for the other sister to hold back aside from the obvious awkwardness that would come from such a situation (well that and her being a lesbian). So when the upset comes, it isn't result of any betrayal, for there has been none. No, the upset is because the first sister has long been in love with this man but has never said so out loud to anyone. This is tough on anyone but, on the other hand, we've all done something like this at least once and the relevant moral lesson is: you snooze, you lose.
Further complicating the thing is that the second sister broke up with her ex because this other woman wasn't interested in having a child. This fact trickles out only accidentally late in the movie because this second sister has been lying to everyone about everything. She, in fact, is responsible for the sole genuine act of betrayal in the film. She sees our wimp guy as a potential sperm donor and doesn't ask him to use a condom. When he brings the operation to a halt because he doesn't have one, she says she thinks she knows where to find one and slips off and then comes back and slips on. She won't let him put it on himself because she has taken a moment to poke it full of holes out in the hall.
If anyone has the right to be genuinely angry, it's the guy. But he isn't. Instead he goes to the first sister and tells her that the most important thing the relationship between sisters. He assures her that he simply does not matter and is so horrified at the thought that he might have been the cause of tension between the two women that he cries. Then he rides off on his bike and cruises around the island where the vacation home is located.
Sadly, he does not run into a gang of Hells Angels who do the world a favour by stomping his sorry ass to death and then feeding the carcass to crows. He does however have the aforementioned spittle-flecked nutty because his crappy bike breaks.
Meanwhile, the girls make up and the first sister offers to help the second one raise her child if she is indeed pregnant. (As always seems to be the case with chick flicks, the movie is pro-choice in the abstract but adamantly anti-abortion in practice.) The movie spends an entire fifteen minutes running time on this reunion. There is no real apology or any real facing of moral facts and there could not be because there isn't anything to apologize for. The only person who has actually been betrayed is out riding his bike around like he wasn't important enough to be allowed to speak or get involved. The two women, meanwhile, are not upset because of anything either has done to the other but because, well, because they are very upset.
They eventually calm down to the point where they can stand to be in the same room with one another, although not speaking. And then, after a lot more acoustic guitar, the second sister apologizes to the first by saying, brace yourself, "Sorry". And that's it.
It ends with all three blissfully happy together watching the second sister pee on a stick and and they all wait to see if it turns blue.
The plot is complicated and not very credible. It features far too many scenes of people sitting down and having heart-to-heart conversations like people just don't have in real life along with some ridiculous twists and turns ultimately winding up with a happy ending that would have made Walt Disney puke but that many critics loved because it has two sisters, one straight, one lesbian and one wimp living together living happily ever after.
If you are an upper-middle-class white person, you will recognize the set up. A guy is still depressed a year after his brother's death. His best female-friend ( but not girlfriend) suggests he go up to a vacation home that she describes as "my father's". Now this is a situation rich with potential for unusual couplings and that is exactly what happens for he arrives at the cottage to find the second sister, a lesbian who has just broken up with her lover, and a bottle of tequila. Tequila is consumed and the two end up in bed.
The guy is a complete dweeb. He is angry, bitter, unemployed and he finishes in less than 40 seconds. It wasn't good for her. She seems surprisingly comfortable with this however.
The problem though is that it is impossible to see why any woman would find this guy attractive. When his bike breaks down later in the film, he has a temper tantrum that would shame a three-year-old boy.
Let me make a wild suggestion, though, that this movie isn't really about what it appears to be about. Just as a lot of teen horror movies are really about sex, this is really a movie about women remaining friends even in the face of sexual relationships which challenge best-friend-forever friendships because they are so much more intimate. There is a whole lot of complication and other stuff camouflaging the thing, but that is the real subject. And that is why it is such a pack of lies. In real life, best-friends-forever are always rapidly surpassed and supplanted by sexual love.
You can see why it hurts. When one ceases to be a child, one puts away childish things but it isn't easy to do so. It's not that you can't still be friends but the nature of the friendship changes. And it is that which this movie sets out to deny.
It's not a movie that attempts to confront any deep issues about this. It pretends to be doing so by creating all sorts of awkward moments but it never shows how people get over awkward conflicts. It simply says that this can happen and that then everything can somehow be made okay somehow. Exactly how that is is hard to say but it apparently involves lots of walking around the beautiful scenery outside the vacation home while acoustic guitar music plays on the soundtrack.
It's one of the marks of chic flicks that there is no real moral responsibility. The guy is not in a relationship with either sister. He's just a friend so there is no reason for the other sister to hold back aside from the obvious awkwardness that would come from such a situation (well that and her being a lesbian). So when the upset comes, it isn't result of any betrayal, for there has been none. No, the upset is because the first sister has long been in love with this man but has never said so out loud to anyone. This is tough on anyone but, on the other hand, we've all done something like this at least once and the relevant moral lesson is: you snooze, you lose.
Further complicating the thing is that the second sister broke up with her ex because this other woman wasn't interested in having a child. This fact trickles out only accidentally late in the movie because this second sister has been lying to everyone about everything. She, in fact, is responsible for the sole genuine act of betrayal in the film. She sees our wimp guy as a potential sperm donor and doesn't ask him to use a condom. When he brings the operation to a halt because he doesn't have one, she says she thinks she knows where to find one and slips off and then comes back and slips on. She won't let him put it on himself because she has taken a moment to poke it full of holes out in the hall.
If anyone has the right to be genuinely angry, it's the guy. But he isn't. Instead he goes to the first sister and tells her that the most important thing the relationship between sisters. He assures her that he simply does not matter and is so horrified at the thought that he might have been the cause of tension between the two women that he cries. Then he rides off on his bike and cruises around the island where the vacation home is located.
Sadly, he does not run into a gang of Hells Angels who do the world a favour by stomping his sorry ass to death and then feeding the carcass to crows. He does however have the aforementioned spittle-flecked nutty because his crappy bike breaks.
Meanwhile, the girls make up and the first sister offers to help the second one raise her child if she is indeed pregnant. (As always seems to be the case with chick flicks, the movie is pro-choice in the abstract but adamantly anti-abortion in practice.) The movie spends an entire fifteen minutes running time on this reunion. There is no real apology or any real facing of moral facts and there could not be because there isn't anything to apologize for. The only person who has actually been betrayed is out riding his bike around like he wasn't important enough to be allowed to speak or get involved. The two women, meanwhile, are not upset because of anything either has done to the other but because, well, because they are very upset.
They eventually calm down to the point where they can stand to be in the same room with one another, although not speaking. And then, after a lot more acoustic guitar, the second sister apologizes to the first by saying, brace yourself, "Sorry". And that's it.
It ends with all three blissfully happy together watching the second sister pee on a stick and and they all wait to see if it turns blue.
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