Butler's Cinema Scene

“OUR LITTLE SISTER” My rating: A-

128 minutes | MPAA rating: PG

“If God can’t figure things out then we’ll have to,” says one of the four Koda siblings whose day-to-day lives are limned in Hirokazu Koreeda’s “Our Little Sister.”

Surely the most profound film ever based on a  graphic novel, “Our Little Sister” is a quiet revelation, a movie of seemingly insignificant moments that add up to an emotionally gripping, transcendent statement about fate and family.

Koreeda’s film (an adaptation of Akimi Yoshida’s celebrated manga) begins with the three Koda sisters — Sachi (Haruka Ayase), Yoshino (Masami Nagasaki) and Chika (Kaho) — learning of the death of their father. They are indifferent. He abandoned his marriage and his daughters years before to take up with one woman, and has since been married to yet another.

But out of a sense of obligation the three young women travel to a distant town to attend the funeral. There they meet Suza (Suza Hirose), their adolescent half sister who was the child of her father’s earlier relationship.

Sachi, the oldest and de facto leader, impulsively asks if Suzu wants to come live with them.  The girl agrees, and suddenly they are a family of four women.

“Our Little Sister” isn’t heavily plotted. In some way it resembles Ang Lee’s “Eat Drink Man Woman,” though Koreeda’s film is virtually melodrama free. Its major attractions are the characters, presented with subtlety and depth, their personalities unfolding slowly.

Sachi, the oldest, is a nurse who spent most of her teenage years raising her two younger siblings. (When Dad left, Mom became a basket case. The girls now rarely see her.) She can’t help acting like a mother — she’s opinionated, scolding and perhaps just a little bitter that her own childhood was cut short. She’s having an affair with a co-worker, a doctor who lives apart from his wife.

Yoshiko, the middle child, is a drinker and a bit of a party girl. She’s always nursing a broken heart over this or that failed romance. But she invariably bounces back, ready for more.

Chika (Kaho) is the youngest and most childlike. She is playful, funny and has an enormous appetite. She’s dating her boss, a former mountaineer who now runs a sporting goods store.

Little Suza quietly flourishes under the guidance of her big sisters. And her presence nudges the older girls to share their memories of childhood, their hopes and aspirations.

And Suza provides the others with something they’ve always lacked — memories of the father they never really got to know.

Little by little “Our Little Sister” morphs into a quietly devastating meditation on mortality and family.

Seemingly without breaking a sweat, this film will leave you breathless.

| Robert W. Butler