Lisa (Nina Hoss) fights for her twin brother Sven (Lars Eidinger).
She donated blood and spinal cord to help him fight his leukemia.
Together, the siblings defy the insidious disease, including wordless understanding.
Like a mother, Lisa cares for Sven, often at the expense of her own family.
And only when you see the mother of the two (Marthe Keller) sitting in her huge old apartment, crammed with theatrical devotional items from past decades, you recognize the background: Sven and Lisa always had to fight through on their own.
Even as children, the traditional family model offered them no support or a safe haven.
Because this woman does not have any maternal feelings.
Many of the upheavals that Swiss directors Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Reymond illustrate so well in the course of the drama “Little Sister” can be explained by this cold-blooded, ignorant mother figure.
Lisa is a writer.
Since her brother was diagnosed, she has been in a creative crisis.
And only through his long death does she find her way back to writing.
While the brother and his effectiveness as a former star of the Berlin Schaubühne fade more and more, Lisa's creativity grows again.
Perhaps she had already been lost when she met her current husband Martin (Jens Albinus).
A very different man than her brother or her ex-boyfriend David (Thomas Ostermeier, who is allowed to play himself as the director of the Schaubühne).
Martin is a robust sportsman, well-trained, dashing and careful about the outside, the form as well as the opinions of others.
He runs a music boarding school in Switzerland, and the modern, sterile ambience there, which is shining through with winter sun, is in stark contrast to the dark, cave-like Berlin apartment.
A great performing ensemble
In their intense feature film, Reymond and Chuat delineate different ways of living and thinking, all of which are closely interwoven with art.
Sven and Lisa embody the existential type that lives until the last breath for art.
Martin and David stand for artists who are subject to different degrees of economic constraints.
Feature films about the doomed are always vaguely bland, because the grand finale is usually similar.
Due to the discussion about how strongly art can still influence the lives of the individual in our timed present, which is mainly portioned according to marketing considerations, the project, which was played well, extends far beyond the classic cancer film.
"Little Sister"
with Nina Hoss, Lars Eidinger
Director: Véronique Reymond, Stéphanie Chuat
Running time: 101 minutes
Worth seeing ****
You like this film if you liked "The Clouds of Sils Maria".
The film is shown here in Munich.
