Las hermanas Macaluso

My mother had five sisters. Despite their age gap they grew up to have such deep bond among them that they used to say 'whoever among us is to die last, will be the unluckiest one.' As a kid I never really comprehend the meaning of it.

After the death of my first aunt, I saw my mother and other aunts mourn for months, years. Their eyes would fill with tears just thinking about our late aunt. As a teenager it was still beyond my comprehension.

During Covid two of my aunts died in two days. I was in the hospital and witnessed their departure. I was an young adult and to watch them go just like that, something changed inside me. I truly felt their loss and the loss of every relative that I'd lost prior. Every bit grief that I should've felt before engulfed me. I was drowned in sorrow. I felt what my mother and the other aunts felt. I experienced actual grief. They say grief is the heaviest emotion. I can firmly confirm that.

This movie showed grief almost exactly like that. I'm saying almost because grief is different for every person. What the sisters in the movie experienced is different from what my mother and aunts did but it was similar. This movie reminded me of that emotion that was outpouring through my tears in the lobby of the hospital. And I appreciate it.

There are five siblings all living in the same house in Sicily, of varying ages, and this film takes us through their lives, loves, trials and tribulations as they must deal with each other and their respective choices and aspirations as they all grow older and deal with tragedy. It's told back to front, really, as we reflect on the life of "Antonella" (Viola Pusateri) whilst dancing around the timelines of what's gone before. It was probably easiest to depict the initial stages of their lives as youngsters growing up and meeting life's new challenges in different ways - boys, girls, hormones, you name it, and for me that segment of the film works best. As they all mature, though, it rather stagnates - a fair reflection on a daily grind best epitomised by the eldest, "Maria" (Eleonora De Luca) who has to take responsibility at a fairly young age and who never really loses, or knows how to lose, that, but not always the most scintillating to watch evolve. It's that despair, with or without a capital 'D' that, together with the house in which they live, provides a rather depressing template for a story that sucks the joy and hope from their characters and leaves them as once aspirational now shells of women whom I found it quite difficult to either relate to nor to sympathise with. What I did like was the paucity of dialogue as it progressed. The imagery, repetitive at times but poignant too, starts to leave our own imagination to do some of the heavy lifting here as we fill in our own interpretation of many of the elements we don't see or learn about directly from the screenplay. It's at times quite a powerfully objective look at the constraining nature of close and intimate family life, but with little real attempt made to give these ladies much depth, I struggled to remain engaged.

This movie is a "remake" of a very famous Italian modern theatre play, author of which being Emma Dante, a Sicilian playwright and director. Very interesting point was the production design of the apartment of the sisters - very extravagant, seen as the 6th sister. The film is heavy, very very indie. For me it was practically a movie on the processing of mourning and enormous sense of guilt that has not been processed. The sisters kinda literally fall apart because of not getting over the tragic accident in their youth. I was not convinced by the cast of adult sisters, because together with costume and make up choices it seemed something surreal - three sisters live together for decades in a real decay, not only external, but also internal. The story of the "guilty" sister was also unclear. Her reading, her life, her story - without a clear meaning.

I liked the feel of the first third of this film, but the opportunity to establish the characters of the five sisters was squandered.

Without knowing more about each sister, it was hard to care what did -- or did not -- happen to each of them. Each sister seemed to have a key trait -- applying lipstick, reading books, etc. -- but I really wanted and needed their characters to be fleshed out.

For me, the most interesting part was when the "sister who reads books", read a passage from a book that I felt sure was The Great Gatsby. (I didn't search to find the passage she read out, so I can't confirm my hunch.)

Adapted from her own stage play, Emma Dante's film 'The Malacuso Sisters' serves up a trio of vignettes of a Sicilian family at different stages of their lives. Key to the story, such as it is, is a tragedy that strikes them at the end of the first part. This beginning, in which the sisters are still children, is nicely assembled and deftly observed. But thereafter the film fails to develop (rather than just imply) a plot, and relies on heavy use of sentimental music to paper over the cracks. One feels there's a tale to be told about these people; but somehow this movie shies short of telling it.