After a festival run beginning at Berlinale and moving to Moscow, Adelaide, and Stockholm, Stéphanie Chuat and Véronique Raymond’s sensitive and subtle My Little Sister/Schwesterlein (2020) arrives at the Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival. The film centres around Lisa (Nina Hoss), a younger sister (by two minutes—which we are told make a big difference) who is caring for her sick twin, Sven (Lars Eidinger). Both are artists unable to perform: Sven is a celebrated actor who has had to put his career on hold to pursue treatment for an aggressive form of Leukaemia, and Lisa is a talented playwright who has been unable to write since her brother’s diagnosis.
The film carefully balances two aspects of Lisa’s personal life. She has moved with her husband Martin (Jens Albinus) and their two children to Switzerland in order to follow his career, whilst her mother and brother remain in Berlin. Lisa attempts to hold her Swiss life together whilst simultaneously looking after Sven in Germany, a role in which their mother has fallen short, not for the first time. As Lisa’s life starts to fall apart around her, there is a thematic link here to another Berlinale graduate, The Ground Beneath My Feet/Der Boden unter den Füßen (Marie Kreutzer, 2019). In that film, a character tries to hide their sister’s illness in order to keep their professional working life together. Lisa takes on the role of carer without ever fully considering the likelihood of her brother’s prognosis. She is so fiercely determined that Sven will get better that her denial begins to push others away: natürlich, she loses her balance.
There is a contrast between the two settings emphasised by the relationship dynamics that play out in each space. Notably, neither is homely to Lisa. We see her isolation in Switzerland, where she predominantly speaks in a mix of English and French, unable to fully express herself. On the other hand, she’s not at home in Berlin either, clashing with her mother (Marthe Keller), unable to contribute to the arts surrounding her which we are told she once thrived in. Perhaps inevitably, the less-interesting domestic drama of the younger family in Switzerland can feel a little hyperbolic in place of meaningful character development, yet what is the experience of dealing with debilitating illness suffered by someone so important to you if not hyperbolic? It is through the relationship between Lisa and Sven that the film really thrives; it is with him that Lisa is at home, safe, content and hopeful. The performances of Hoss and Eidinger are strikingly intimate, which masterfully raises the stakes as we see the warnings of what a profound loss Lisa would experience if Sven were not to make it to the end. When the domestic drama in Switzerland fails to engage, it is Hoss and Eidinger that keep you watching.
One unique and moving message from the film is the cold indifference of others in the face of illness. Shockingly, a major obstacle Lisa must face is that she is repeatedly told by others that they shouldn’t have to witness Sven die, that it would upset them. She powers past this rhetoric, but the cruel truth of it is chilling. The power of the twins’ relationship is that Lisa refuses to look away when everyone else has already left their seats. As Lisa observes at one point in the film, if you take away an actor’s audience, you’ve taken away what they live for. She refuses to do that to her brother, but at what cost?
