Sisterhood is powerful

Sometimes unrelated films watched in succession suddenly reveal a common thread.  I certainly didn’t set out to watch films about sisters, but this diverse -- indeed globe-spanning -- group proved to have that hidden connection, as well as a level of quality in common, worth firm but not urgent recommendation.

In Kon Ichikawa’s The Makioka Sisters (1983, NFX) there are four, and we follow their lives through four seasons, from cherry blossom season to its return a year later, under the shadow of coming World War II.  Reminiscent of Ozu in its focus on domestic interiors, both physical and psychological, this film has a visual lushness all its own.  The kimonos dazzle as much as the cherry blossoms.  In this well-to-do family the two elder sisters are well-married and seeking a similar match for the demure third sister, who is in no rush, which puts pressure on the wilder and more modern fourth sister, who is in no mind to hold off on her own attachments till her elder gets hitched.  The setting may be exotic, but the intrafamiliar tensions are readily identifiable.

I assumed Treeless Mountain (2009, MC-75, NFX) was a Korean film till I found out after the fact that director So Yong Kim is an American living in Brooklyn.  In tight close-up and intimate empathy she follows two young sisters, perhaps seven and four, who are dumped by their emotionally distracted mother with a drunken aunt, before finding refuge in the country with a more welcoming grandmother.  The kids are in the dark about what the adults are up to, and so are we, as we share their limited perspective on events.  Apparently the director’s mother emigrated to America before she came over herself at the age of 12, and she clearly draws on her own feelings of abandonment and misunderstanding to elicit remarkable performances from the two little girls.  The film is slightly derivative (cf. Nobody Knows), but well done by a promising filmmaker.

Vision: From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen (2010, MC-68, NFX) deals with a different sort of sister, as it explores the life and relationships of a 12^th-century nun.  Veteran director Margarethe von Trotta features frequent collaborator Barbara Sukowa as Hildegard, the highly-accomplished mysti, and leader of a convent, whick breaks away from the rule of monks to establish an independent sacred community of women.  The nuns do not leave behind jealousy, envy, and other untoward emotions, but the religious life is portrayed in a spare and even-handed manner.  Not a film to sweep you up in its story, but involving in a low-key way.   

Cliente, the original title of French Gigolo.  (2008, NFX), keeps the focus where it belongs, on Nathalie Baye, as a professional divorcee who solves the problem of sex by buying it when she feels the urge.  Josiane Balasko, who also directed, plays her sister, roommate, and business partner, taking a decidedly more romantic approach.  Eric Caravaca is endearing as the gigolo who may turn out to be something more.  Ah, French sex comedy, so much more sophisticated than the American variety!  And ahhh, Nathalie Baye, no less seductive as a woman of a certain age than she was as a scriptgirl in Truffaut’s Day for Night and so many other notable films in between!  One is supposed to fall in love with film stars, and Nathalie is a longtime flame of mine, never less than appealing.