Me and My Sister

The film "Les Soeurs fachees" is very moving. It really comes alive because of the two extraordinary lead actresses. Especially the wonderful Isabelle Huppert. She is amazing the way she can express emotions, during the movie, without saying a word. You can read it all in her beautiful face. During the movie you get to know, nearly in every scene, how different these sisters are. The cold, unhappy Martine and the nice and friendly Louise. It proofs how important are goals for you life, and it's never to late to change something,to become happy. A wonderful true french film, refreshing, charming, sad, might make you laugh and cry. Loved it. I would definitely recommend it to everyone who loves great cinema with talented actors, and dislikes Hollywood Studio Movies.

I'm very surprised to find not a single comment on such a class act. Okay, it's a new release but it IS five days old now. Anyhow it's so good to see that Isabelle Huppert has temporarily abandoned her apparent avowed intent to plumb the depths of sleaze in her ongoing trawl through the sewers of the world and return to what she does better than most actresses anyplace, anytime, anywhere that this could be a stinker and it would still be a breath of fresh air. As it happens it's anything but and Huppert and Catherine Frot are twin delights. Huppert is the chic, snobbish wife living in the right arrondissement, checking accounts in all the right places and the right kind of husband to pick up the tab. The wonderful Francis Berleand scores as the unfaithful husband who can't stand sister-in-law Frot; normally that's not a problem since Frot lives in the provinces but now she's written a book and has come to town to rubber-stamp a publishing deal and will spend three days with Huppert and Berleand. What we have is a very low-key take on Neil Simon's Odd Couple with Frot being everything Huppert is not and vice versa. Frot, fresh from playing a Tyrant's Tyrant in Vipere au poing turns up here as the kind of lovable kook that Shirley MacLaine was always being cast as but could never quite bring off because she couldn't do lovable (she couldn't do kook either if anybody ask you but that's another story), and she shows Maclaine just how it's done.

Okay, we're talking soufflé here but it's a French soufflé, hand-made at Maxim's. Eat, Enjoy.

Fantastic acting, very entertaining. Though the things which happen in the movie are not always nice, it has been long since I have followed a movie with so much enjoyment from the first to its last minute. Not having read anything about the movie before, I was open to let the action surprise me. I recommend anyone not to read to much about the storyline before watching it, but just go and watch. To answer one of the comments above, yes, the movie is also interesting for people not familiar with the Paris-Countryside clinch (such as me). I think it is because the feelings/situations transported in it, though set in a French framework, are universal. There have been situations in my life when I have felt more like the one or like the other sister. Different as they are, the reactions of all characters are completely understandable. The movie does the trick to combine affectionate caricature and merciless realism. This is why the movie is catching and moving, while at the same time you are observing and enjoying from a kind of layd-back perspective. I just realize that might be the reason why the action never made me feel embarrassed, and allowed me to watch at times with some voyeuristic indulgence. Yes, the movie does not condemn any character, but brings affection for human imperfection. If you like the taste of film food which is a quite perfect dish of different flavours, go watch.

This comedy of manners depicts too opposite sisters in a satire that is too crude and clichéd to be really moving. The Paris/province (rest of France)divide is a source of inspiration for many French comedies but the rotten humor and the engaging characters cannot make up for the very predictable plot.

Some moments are really funny though, there is a kind of tenderness in the caricatured portrait of each sister so all in all it's not such a bad try for a first film.

Eventually it's more a duel of two styles of acting, an encounter of 2 different actress with their own class. Not exactly a good film but a pleasant shot.

Despite occasional overacting, this movie contains some interesting psychological and sociological insights. Most of the situations are plausible, even when they contain stereotypes. Although Martine's character could be construed as vicious and riddled with over-the-top intolerance, in the end she arouses more pity than contempt. Her younger sister Louise, fresh from the provinces and utterly devoid of sophistication and savoir-faire, in the end turns up trumps, a modern version of Andersen's ugly duckling. All the minor characters appear credible, as they witness with patient puzzlement the increasingly hysterical outbursts of the Parisian sister. A subtle touch is provided by Martine's unprepossessing little boy, who should be, but isn't, the logical comfort to his mother's depressive condition. If there is a moral to this fast-paced middle-class comedy, it is that no intelligent woman should sentence herself to merely being a wife and mother. Louise, on the other hand, has twigged this, and triumphs in the end.