While Jennifer Lawrence has drawn the limelight in America in recent years, an equally impressive rise to prominence has been made across the Atlantic by frenchwoman Lea Seydoux. Her appearance in Blue is the Warmest Colour has drawn the accolades and headlines, but add in a gripping performance opposite Diane Kruger in the lavish Farewell, My Queen, and a cameo in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, Seydoux has proven to add a diverting presence to whatever project she takes part in. This is again the case with 2012 Ursula Meier‘s Sister.
Written for screen by Meier, along with Antoine Jaccoud and Gilles Taurand, this film drew wide plaudits upon release, with Seydoux the central figure of admiration. However, equal praise and excitement should also be reserved for the film’s other star, Kacey Mottet Klein.
Klein plays Simon, a 12-year-old boy living with his elder sister Louise (Seydoux) in the Swiss Alps at the foot of a ski lodge. Each year, the ski season welcomes wealthy tourists from around the world and up on the slopes Simon has discovered that gear is not hard to come by; nor is it particularly sorely missed. Each day he heads up the mountain, each day he comes down with cash and a collection of loot to sell.
It is not by choice that he does this. For reasons not spoken of, Louise’s life has plateaued into a sequence of affairs and menial jobs that have left her disillusioned, unreliable and flaky in her responsibilities for her Simon, who continues to support their precarious existence by way of theft, a profession that can only end in tears.
Centred on a fragile and dangerously codependent pair of have-nots, this is a poignant, at times harrowing, contemplation on lives played out in wilful deception – sometimes to support a livelihood, sometimes blocking out an unwelcome but everpresent truth, and sometimes betraying inherent responsibilities. As such, Simon and Louise’s paths are never more than a step away from disaster, rendering a gripping underlying tension to the drama.
Through Simon’s interactions with a mother of two holidaying at the resort (Gillian Anderson) and a sympathetic cook (Martin Compston), a pitiful but admirable portrait is built of this boy’s resourcefulness. And it is a credit to Klein’s performance that we can empathise with his character’s dilemma: wanting to be more responsible than his age allows in order to help Louise; but also longing to be a child free of that responsibility.
Of course, this film also works due to its other anchoring performance from Seydoux. Her’s is a face that never fully discloses the whole picture, and her simmering demeanour is perfectly balanced with a nervous hostility. And as events build to a head, the strength of her and Klein’s leads ensure this heartfelt study of life on the edge lingers in the mind beyond the final credits.
Sister is out on DVD through Palace Films.
