The next movie showing for the Vernon Film Society’s fall program is Our Little Sister.
This movie, to be shown Monday, is based on the award-winning manga series Umimachi Diary.
Those who enjoyed director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s movie Like Father, Like Son last season will look forward to this graceful, tender film.
Three adult sisters live together in a relaxed, tight-knit seaside town south of Tokyo, where they have been since the breakup of their parents’ marriage. They reluctantly decide to attend their long-estranged father’s funeral. There they meet their shy teenage half-sister Suzu and, being beguiled by her, invite her to live with them.
Quickly bonding, the journey of self-discovery for all four is a journey into a painful past but also shows them reaching forward to a hopeful future.
The movie was nominated for the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or and is an exquisite family drama, set across the colours of the four seasons, which celebrates not only the beauty of nature, but family love.
Small moments of work and fun show us a side of Japan that not many of us are familiar with. The beauty of cherry blossom time and the many wonderful meals (do not attend while hungry) will make you want to be more familiar.
“The film is quiet, understated and gentle, allowing the audience to take pleasure in teasing out narrative subtleties, and presented with wonderful freshness and clarity… It is impossible not to be touched and beguiled by it,” wrote Peter Bradshaw, with The Guardian.
Our Little Sister will be shown at the Vernon Towne Cinema Monday, Oct. 31 at 5:15 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. Tickets ($7 cash only) are available one week ahead at the Theatre and Bean Scene. The film is rated general.