Your Sister's Sister

The story begins a year after Jack's brother has died. Jack (Mark Duplass) hears his friends revering his brother at a gathering but angrily insists they didn't really know him as he knew the whole picture and said he was a bully too. His best friend Iris (Emily Blunt), who was the brother's ex girlfriend, says he needs some space so tells him to go up her family cabin to be alone, which he does.

 There he meets her sister Hannah (Rosemarie Dewitt) who also decided to go there to be alone, to nurse the pain of a breakup. That evening they commiserate, mostly about her, and end up having drunk sex, even though Hannah is a lesbian.

The next day Iris decides to visit on a whim and the threesome spend the weekend together in the cabin and many sibling emotions, good and bad, come to the surface.

You almost forget (or at least I did) that Jack is also there to get through his grief. I think the two actresses were credible as sisters and the dialogue, both scripted and improvised, was emotionally realistic. Duplass also gave a pretty good performance although there were shots where he was a bit hamming it up in some reaction shots. I think this triangle is acceptably real as part romance and part friendship, although the tie up at the end is a bit too neat.

During Q&A the director Lynn Shelton told us Rachel Weisz was supposed to have the Hannah role but pulled out three days prior to shooting and Dewitt had to step in, so I think Dewitt did a really good job fleshing out this character in such a short time whereas the other actors had several months to discuss and prepare. Shelton also told us that the Hannah character was originally supposed to be Iris' attractive young mother, which she changed to a sister, and I think that was a really good choice too as I thought to have Jack's relationship with his dead brother paralleled with that between the sisters was a good connection. Even though the brother is dead you can see he still affects Jack very much, similar to how the sisters are--both in good and bad ways, you know he loves his brother but can admit he had major faults too, as well as comparing himself to the brother, all things which the sisters communicate openly as well as in secret with Jack or in veiled remarks.