Sister

This is an unusual, involving, slightly strained character study from Ursula Meier, the French director of 2008’s satirical dystopia, ‘Home’. A sense of suburban decay and lives in limbo carries over from that earlier film as we meet Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein), a latchkey 12-year-old living with his twentysomething sister, Louise (Léa Seydoux), in a block at the foot of a ski slope. Their relationship is loving but strained: Louise lives like a teen, drinking and staying out late, leaving Simon to bring in the bread, which he does by stealing ski equipment from foreigners and flogging it to pals. The central turns are wonderful – and ably backed by Gillian Anderson and Martin Compston as outsiders who fall under Simon’s spell – and Meier directs with quiet, unfussy grace. The script never gets to the heart of these troubled characters (and a midway twist isn’t fully satisfying) but ‘Sister’ is worth seeing for two scenes: an act of horrifying familial ‘prostitution’ and a devastatingly cold, bitter climax.