★★★★☆ / Take your time and you’ll be first, don’t compete and you’ll stay alive: Review of the movie “Sisters” | Culture

In Lauryns Bareiša’s latest film “Sisters” we see a situation where jealousy and competition take over and it looks both absurdly funny and realistically ugly at the same time. The director seems to try to present the situations in the film as naturally, domestically and recognizable as possible, so that the effect of unpleasantness spreads in the most unpleasant shades. And he does this not by some visual means, but precisely through the created atmosphere, through the subtlety of the acting and the everydayness of the language. So that the feeling is like watching a reality documentary, not a movie. Realism always shakes more.

There isn’t a lot of action in “Sisters” – the film seems to float, and time in it is a bit stagnant, maybe even a bit scattered, but also fragmented. It creates the feeling of a slow summer, the heat of which keeps the air stagnant until finally the rain comes and washes away everything that has been there. L. Bareiša puts together the story, which is revealed piece by piece and detail by detail, from parts that are a little scattered, but in the end fit together perfectly, covering a period of about a year, during which the lives of the sessions Ernesta (Gelmíne Glemžaitė) and Justė (Agnė Kaktaitė) change. One fateful event turns everything upside down and both sisters become single mothers.

A scene from the movie “Sisters”

And that fateful event probably wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for the combination of jealousy and competition in which the session men Lukas (Paulius Markevičius) and Tomas (Giedrius Kiela) simmer. As Ernesta and Justė themselves, upon arriving at the homestead and going out to their friend, whisper to each other – “well, you idiots”. Lukas has just won a fight, a promising MMA fighter, with beautiful features, a beautiful and strong body (spoiler alert: due to his body strength and strong muscles, he receives compliments and thanks even after his death), but maybe his situation with finances is not so grateful, because he receives fees, not salary, is not considered reliable by the bank. Tom is a businessman for whom it is important to have (and show off) the most powerful and latest machine possible, and otherwise, it seems important to show his superiority. So it can already be assumed that strange processes should take place between such two personalities, where they want to prove something, even though there is nothing to prove. Just to satisfy your ego, just to compete and it’s not even clear why.

Photo of the filmmakers/Paulius Markevičius. A scene from the movie “Sisters”

From the very first shots, when you arrive at the homestead, you can feel some kind of heaviness in the atmosphere – it seems that here couples will discuss their relationship with each other and try to mold something that does not fit together. Perhaps those absurdly comical dances of the male ego, manifested in displays of pride, cigar smoking, displays of power and tragically effective impotence when it comes to taking real action, stem from the fact that the relationship is imperfect and lacks intimacy. The most eloquent scene of the film paradoxically becomes the most muted, during which it seems that together with the pouring rain, the real characters of the men also appear – after saving the drowning girl (because he knew how to perform artificial respiration), Lukas is calmly chewing the snacks on the table, while Tom is incapacitated , his whole being seems to ooze with a sense of inferiority, and only after a while joins in chewing on Luke, as if cursing the latter for being the one who brought his daughter back to life. Male psychology is complicated in such cases, whatever you do.

Photo by Giedrius Kiela / Pauliaus Peleckis.

The crash that follows, which we eventually learn ends with Luke’s death, feels like a fulfillment of Tom’s jealousy and takes us back to the beginning of the film, where the dangerous overtaking to catch up with Tom’s powerful new car seems to become fatal. Competition kills.

Although L. Bareiša promised that he would try to escape from the coldness of “Pilgrims” with “Sisters”, it seems that he does not escape too far and remains faithful to his way of storytelling and filming (he himself is the cameraman of his films). Coldness prevails in the colors, and the shots themselves are filmed as if watching from the sidelines and detaching themselves (this is why we want to say that the film is documentary-realistic, because we see reflections of reality not only in the way the characters act), allowing the lingering atmosphere to unfold and not too much trying to offer some kind of evaluations . L. Bareiša allows the film to unfold through pauses (thus bringing what is happening closer to the real flow of time), listening to the environment (and there are plenty of environmental sounds) and using recognizable intrusions of real reality – Jessica Shy’s hits on the soundtrack do their job perfectly.

Lukas Balandis/BNS photo/Laurynas Bareiša

L. Bareiša remains faithful to himself also thematically, maintaining a focus on a certain domesticity and refusing to allow “glamour” elements into the film – the simpler, the better – from costumes to interiors. It seems as if by doing this kind of mathematical calculation, he was trying to distance the film as much as possible from becoming one where the viewer would feel the so-called filminess, light artificiality. A lot of meaning in both The Sisters and The Pilgrims is born of indifference—in this case, it seems that indifference ends up being the main driving force, the motivation that creates destructive situations and enables the thirst for attention. And then again L. Bareisha’s characters have to solve crime in a small town…