Touches You

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

This is your typical example of "The Emperor's New Clothes"If you have better and more important things to do, this is not a film to watch. You're really not missing anything by skipping this film. It's one of those sleeper films that you'd play during midnight and eventually fall asleep to. Don't get me wrong, I was actually excited to watch this, but I mean seriously, somebody has to speak out the truth -- this is really just your average movie where nothing really happens. So it has a cute cast, especially Suzu Hirose, and it's by a well known acclaimed director (seems where most of the bias is coming from), but there's no real suspense/drama/conflict or anything. It's just like another overrated film "Linda Linda Linda", where nothing really happens, but people seem to love it just because of the girls.One might argue, "Well, it's showing the real life day in the life of that Hollywood can never make!" Well, of course they won't make something like this because it's just simply boring; just showing sisters taking care of each other is absolutely boring. (I mean, honestly, I don't care for Hollywood blockbuster/action films/especially all the superhero movies either, I'm obviously not expecting that, but I also watch a lot of foreign/Japanese films and this really is overrated stuff.) Sure, to a foreigner, just seeing the countryside location taking place in Kamakura, Japan, and random bike riding scenes under the cherry blossoms is all beautiful and all, but that's all superficial. Where's the story? Too many Weeaboos, or people exclusively watching this at film festivals, overpraising this film than what it really is.

Like so many foreign films, this is devoid of special effects, tiresome action sequences, gratuitous sex and violence-- just a lovely little gem that truly makes you feel at its conclusion like you were immersed in another culture for awhile. You forget that these people are actors-- it's more like watching real sisters in real life. One also comes away wanting to visit rural Japan-- it was refreshing to see more of the countryside as opposed to the large cities with all the congestion and crowding. All in all, if you are looking for a movie that leaves you feeling all warm and fuzzy at its conclusion, look no further-- "Our Little Sister" is an excellent film and I highly recommend it!

"Our Little Sister" is a simple, beautiful little film. It focuses on a small scale - a bunch of sisters who decide to start caring for their little half-sister after meeting her at their father's funeral - but the characters are universally relatable. It deals with themes of family, love, childhood, dealing with change, and human connection. If anything, this is a very human film.The cinematography is gorgeous, but subtle and subdued. The film goes along with a slow pace, but this helps it focus on the great beauty of the small moments in everyday life. Although the slow pace of the film make take some time to get into, all the characters feel lovable but flawed by the end. All of the performances, including child actors, are spot on. The slow build up has major payoff because the sentimentality of the film doesn't feel forced or exaggerated. These emotional moments are played pretty straight, and they all work immensely well.The film is simultaneously a coming of age story for the youngest sister, Suzu, and the oldest, Sachi, although it focuses on each character enough to feel emotionally attached to each one. Even most side characters are given a good degree of depth.This is a beautiful family film that doesn't just focus on the effect of family, but finding your own family. It's about solidarity with the people one loves despite everything that each person has gone through (or is going through).

So why does Our Little Sister open with a shot of a woman's feet and pan up her bare legs to reveal her in bed with her lover, presumably naked under the blanket? This very sensual image is completely out of step with the film's quiet, meditative story of three sisters adopting the 13-year-old half-sister they meet at their father's funeral. The film pays a lot of attention to the women's legs and feet. The woman in bed is Yoshino, 22, who gives money to her wastrel lover, drinks heavily and has slept around. Later she prominently strips off her black stockings in the right foreground. All four sisters flash their legs in all the long and medium shots, an openness that contrasts to the scenes in which the traditional kimonos conceal their legs entirely. (In a culinary parallel to this movement away from tradition, all the chopstick eating scenes are joined by one scene where spoons are used for a curry.)In a scene of girlish mischief Chika,19, paints 13-year-old Suzu's toenails. Despite her youth, of the three senior sisters Chika has the healthiest and most stable affair, with the adventurous colleague at the sporting goods store. Despite having lost six toes to frostbite he is a full man, with the freest commitment both to his lover and life. The three sisters have been living in their grandmother's house since their mother abandoned them, their father having run off with his mistress (Suzu's mother). Nurse Sachi, 29, has been raising both sisters and takes the initiative in rescuing Suzu from having to live with her stepmother, their father's third wife, after his funeral. The father's death, Suzu's arrival and the tensions raised by their mother's callous visit force the sisters to confront their past and to take more conscious control over their lives. They become aware of how their parents' abandonment has been influencing their behaviour. After her lover dumps Yoshino she controls her instinct to please men at all costs, as if pleasing them would salve her irrational guilt for not having better pleased her father. Her new bank job with a compassionate male boss leads her to a new self-respect and responsibility. Young Suzu slips easily into her life with the sisters, her school, the co-ed soccer team, but she is unable to talk to her sisters about their father. Drunk and unconscious she calls her father an idiot. but through the family's experience is freed to express her suppressed anger at her mother's neglect. She begins to ease into a relationship with a class- and team-mate, in whom she first confides her reticence. Similarly the sober eldest sister, Sachi, reminded of the destructiveness and folly of her father's self-indulgence, refuses to join her paediatrician lover's move to America, despite his promise to divorce his unstable wife for her. Sachi will stay with her doubled responsibilities of guiding her sisters and serving her dying patients in the new palliative care ward.This cycle of life and death plays out against the seasons. There are shots of stunning autumnal glory. The harvesting of the plums and the mixed delights of plum swine recur in the narrative. In their make-up scene Sachi brings their mother a jug of their recent plum wine and the last jug of their grandmother's. Suzu's promising swain bicycles her through a tunnel of refulgent cherry blossoms. An old restaurant owner takes a dying woman for a last look at those blossoms —and offers to tell Suzu stories about her father. That dying woman is the sisters' mother surrogate. They have patronized her diner since their infancy. Bankrupted by her own brother's calling in a loan, the woman treasures the — now four — sisters as children she never had. Now dying, she finds ease in Sachi's hospital care and the attentions of the man who ran his own diner — and continues to serve her recipes. The surrogate mother's funeral provides an emotional climax in place of the complications their mother's death and funeral would have raised.In the last scene the four sisters leave that funeral to walk along the beach. They cavort together at the edge of the tide, still in their funeral blacks — but they don't take off their shoes. From all the film beach frolics we've watched we expect they would. Keeping on their shoes — even their heels — becomes an indication of their new self-knowledge, self-control and discipline. Legs, feet, they're an emblem of our grounding, the base on which we stand and move. The framing shots — naked legs and heels kept on at the beach — encapsulate the women's growth from the impulses of a sensual, unexamined life to the maturity of self-control and self- respect. The opening scene leads us to expect yet another story of sexual awakening. Instead we get what the sisters blossom into, the primacy of family connection and responsible, giving love.