“It was nothing!” declared another critic at the press screening of Our Little Sister. The three-word indictment, given his tone, could only be read as disparagement. But I can say the very same thing of Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda’s new film and mean it as nothing but the highest praise.
Our Little Sister is a slow, quiet, and occasionally very funny and touching movie about a family of women—three sisters in their 20s who’ve been essentially abandoned by their mother, and whose father has just died after abandoning them years before. When they find out he left behind a daughter—their half-sister Suzu (Suzu Hirose)—Sachi (Haruka Ayase), Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa), and Chika (Kaho) decide to adopt her, bringing her into their household in a gesture that would seem excessively sentimental were it not for some complex dynamics brewing under the surface.