Richard Crouse

“Your Sister’s Sister” contains the most modest sex scene of the year. It’s the kind of scene where great care is taken to pull blankets up to the neck and whatever glimpses of unblanketed human form is on display are shrouded in a t-shirt. It’s a sequence that sums up the entire movie—modest and not nearly as revealing as it should be.

Actor – director Lynn Shelton has created a three-hander to examine the fraught relationship between a trio of people, sisters Iris and Hannah (Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt) and Jack (Mark Duplass) the brother of Iris’s late ex-boyfriend. The odd bunch find themselves at a remote family cottage, examining their relationships after a night of drunken fun goes too far.

A mix of improvisation and scripted dialogue, “Your Sister’s Sister” is a nicely performed piece that feels like a nicely performed piece and little more. Characters talk about themselves and their relationships but their development feels stagey and often contrived. It’s a case of good actors saddled with too much dialogue and bad editing. Scenes go on longer than they should, and by the time we get to the rom-com-esque ending the movie has a hard time justifying its ninety-minute running time.