Your Sister’s Sister

Directed by Lynn Shelton

(R)

***

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“Very little is simple” in this comedy/drama—“not the emotions, the naturalistic tone, or the unstudied, easygoing performances,” said Ann Hornaday in The Washington Post. “But the film’s pleasures are,” from the moment a man in crisis (Mark Duplass) repairs to a friend’s remote cabin for some alone time only to land in a messy romantic triangle. You know instantly that “you’re in the presence of people who will surprise and delight you,” said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. Emily Blunt plays the thoughtful friend who didn’t realize that her lesbian sister was already living at the cabin and primed for a mindless fling. Rosemarie DeWitt shares Duplass’s “disregard for fixed boundaries,” and when Blunt’s Iris shows up ready to declare her own feelings for Duplass’s Jack, the comedy “darts and lurches” on the waves of these characters’ confused feelings. Little of the dialogue was scripted, and “the result is a film that is both warmly funny as well as uncomfortable,” said Ian Buckwalter in TheAtlantic.com. “Every time a character fumbles for the right words,” we see a little more of ourselves.