Your Sisters Sister

Lynn Shelton is one of the best filmmakers to come out of the last decade (no, I will not use the "M" word), and she returns to the big screen with her newest film Your Sisters Sister, starring Mark Duplass, Emily Blunt, and Rosemarie DeWitt. Duplass plays Jack, a man still reeling from the death of his brother, who is invited up to a family cabin for some "alone" time by best friend Iris (Emily Blunt). When he gets there, he finds Iris's half sister, Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt), and, after blasting through a bottle of tequila together, inhibitions loosen (and, apparently orientations, as Hannah is a lesbian), and Jack and Hannah end up in a compromising situation, which they spend part of the film trying to hide from Iris.

Your Sisters Sister builds on the small group dynamics that Shelton seems to be working on in all of her films (most of them have no more than three main characters), and it feel like she has really come into her own on this one. It comes off as a well crafted, relatively subtle, portrayal of love (both familial and romantic), loss, and loneliness. She really could not have chosen three better actors to play the roles. This is, in my opinion, a must see.

DVD - My Effortless Brilliance

Lynn Shelton, by way of being at the right place at the right time, sort of fell into the whole Mumblecore scene by befriending folks like Joe Swanberg and others at various film festivals around the time that that movement began. Since then, she's had a roll in Swanberg's Young American Bodies, and Nights and Weekends, and followed up her debut feature, We Go Way Back, with My Effortless Brilliance, and Humpday. She continues to grow, and explore some of the more mature aspects of relationships that her contemporaries don't seem to scratch on.

Brilliance begins with the abrupt breakdown of a friendship between the characters Eric and Dylan. Eric is a writer who's ego has become too big for his friend Dylan to handle. Flash forward two years, and Eric has seen his share of let down, seeing the follow up to his debut novel crash and burn, and being humbled by the only mild success of his third novel. On a trip to Eastern Washington to give a lecture, Eric seeks to find Dylan, and tracks him down to a cabin in the woods. But has two years been enough time for Dylan to forgive and forget?

Effortless Brilliance is hard to nail down. On one hand, it is filled with long, rambling scenes that often times don't seem to go anywhere except to further establish the characters relationship with one another (which is pretty well done within the first half hour or so). On the other hand, I think the film is an amazing dissection of the way a friendship can dissolve because of one persons complete inability to really be the kind of friend the other person needs. I feel like I've been on both sides of this situation, and I feel like Shelton and her crew really managed to suss out a lot of what goes on between two people in that situation. Basil Harris and Sean Nelson fit PERFECTLY into their roles, and I think they are a primary reason, other than Shelton's direction, that this film succeeds as well as it does. My Effortless Brilliance is not a perfect film, but it is a good film with a lot of things to say and to think about.