2007 SXSW NARRATIVE COMPETITION FEATURE! Having a sibling can be hard sometimes. Having a crazy sister can be even worse. Yet if you told me I had to choose between seeing this movie again and listen to my sister (the bane of my existence) prattle on for an hour, I would listen to my sister’s rants. At least she would make more sense than sitting through this one long run-on sentence of a film.
Rosie (Lily Wheelwright) is a wannabe artist who pops pills. She goes to visit her sister Sonia (James Katharine Flynn) for her birthday. Their parents died in a car crash five years ago and this is their first time seeing each other again. Then, well, the rest of the movie they bicker, dance, and Rosie tries to kill herself at some point. To be honest with you, this film was just all over the place and ended up not making sense. I don’t know whether it was the poor acting from both actresses or maybe it was the lackluster dialogue. I guess I might as well get to talking more technically about the film.
Ry Russo-Young directed this film and the whole thing just felt like a film school exercise. Now, yes, I know I am being really hard and I hate that, because lets just be honest here: What does tearing up a film really accomplish? The answer is nothing. Then again, “nothing” is exactly what this film accomplished.
I moreso just had a problem believing the story. Here’s an example: Sonia tells Rosie that she is pregnant and she wants to keep the baby. Rosie then starts to smoke and Sonia then tells her to not smoke around her since she is having a baby. Then for the rest of the film, Sonia is drinking vodka and wine and Rosie doesn’t say anything about it. The baby isn’t even mentioned again for the rest of the film. Now if I am to believe that a woman is going to have a baby, I doubt she is going to be pounding the alcohol. Also there were many times that they drifted in and out of whether you could believe they were even sisters. On top of that, the film didn’t have any solid pacing whatsoever, and don’t get me started about the ending.
I might as well just wrap this angry rant, as I just didn’t have a good time with this film. It was trying to be artsy and experimental, but it comes off more like sloppy and ill-experienced. I have seen films like this in the past, but executed in a much better way.
