“A trio of superb performances guide a plot that pivots on secrets and lies before they fester. Your Sister’s Sister works its way into your head until you can’t stop thinking about it.” Rolling Stone
On the occasion of romcom specialist par excellence Nora Ephron’s death, Jason Solomon’s wrote about Your Sister’s Sister in The Observer:
“Following her excellent 2009 “bromantic” comedy Humpday, Seattle-based director Lynn Shelton again probes modern relationships in Your Sister’s Sister, but with a more mumbly comedy squarely in the current US indie style. The set-up, though, is every bit as high-concept as one from a studio script meeting.
“Emily Blunt (the British star who also starred in last week’s pleasant-enough romcom The Five-Year Engagement) features here as Iris, lending her father’s log cabin to aid the recovery of her best friend Jack (Mark Duplass, from Humpday) who has been drinking too much since the death of his brother, Iris’s ex-boyfriend.
“Adding to the equation, when Jack arrives at the cabin in the woods, he finds Iris’s gay half-sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt) already there and wearing no underwear. A night of tequila and conversation leads to terrible but amusing sex, while the rude awakening is provided the next morning by the unexpected arrival of Iris.
“A three-hander ensues, each character guarding, then sharing secrets. The naturalism of the performances provides the film’s charm – a giggle from Blunt, tears from the excellent DeWitt – and with the improvisations evident in Your Sister’s Sister, the modern romcom has gone from emetic to mimetic. Shelton’s method is to reproduce reality as closely as possible. That traditional obstacle-to-love vital to all romcoms (in Ron Howard’s Splash, she’s a fish) has been removed in this story of Hannah and her sister, leaving only the characters’ neuroses, fears and inadequacies as their impediments. Although she would probably have liked a little more plot and polish, Nora Ephron would, I think, have approved.”
