Switzerland, country of extreme wealth and enviable social provisions, is hardly the first setting that comes to mind when thinking of gritty social realism. This is the main problem with Sister, which focuses on Simon (Klein), a 12-year-old forced to steal from a ski resort to provide for himself and his profligate sister (Seydoux). Not that it’s a wholly impossible scenario, but the film gladly glosses over all the specifics necessary for it to be plausible, rendering the misery contrived and eroding the pathos it so badly strives for.
Sister (L’Enfant d’en haut) | Directed by Ursu la Meier (France/Switzerland 2012) with Kacey Mottet Klein and Léa Seydoux. Starts November 8