Your Sister's Sister (2012)

I missed this charming romantic comedy drama during both it's Tribeca Film Festival screenings and it's run in theaters.

The plot of the film has Jack and Iris dealing with Jack's brother's death. Iris, Jack's one time girlfriend, tells Jack to go and hide away at her father's house in the country. Jack goes only to find that the house is occupied with Hannah, Iris's sister who is trying to get over a break up with her girlfriend. A few drinks later and the pair end up in bed...and then they have to deal with Iris who has shown up in the morning in order to make a move on Jack.

Wonderful little romantic trifle works because the characters played by Mark Duplass, Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt are the sort of people you want to hang with. These are three great people who are the sort of people you just want to have as friends. They aren't extreme in one thing or another, they simply are. They are simply regular people and not characters.

What I love is how the scenes play out between the characters. I love the long conversations that allow the actors to show their characters lives and emotional terrain. There are seeming long takes that allow the characters to really interact, to really come together and to create a sense that we are watching some form of real life.

What I don't like is that after a perfectly paced first hour or so the film suddenly cranks everything up in the final half hour. Scenes stop unfolding naturally, rather the film gallops to a conclusion. What happened?Did they have a time limit? It's not like they had to let things run any more than say 15  or 20 minutes...

This was shaping up to be one of my absolute guilty pleasures of the year, instead it's one of the films that is just outside the gate of being a favorite.

But I'm quibbling. This is really a super little film. See it and feel good.