Your Sister's Sister (Rhoades)

“Your Sister’s Sister”

Gives New Definition

To Threesome

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Have you ever had a threesome? Other than in your fantasies, I mean. That’s what the indie film “Your Sister’s Sister” is about. But not quite in the way you think.

Writer-director Lynn Shelton (“Humpday”) offers up an odd, but tender, little ménage à trois that doesn’t involve six arms and six legs in a sexual tangle.

Jack (Mumblecore regular Mark Duplass) is depressed because his brother died. So his best-est friend Iris (Brit-born Emily Blunt) sends him to chill out at the family’s island cottage. But when he gets there he encounters Iris’s sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt) in a Peeping Tom cute-meet. Hannah’s licking her own wounds after a nasty breakup with her longtime lesbian partner. And in a questionable moment, Jack and Hannah get drunk and fall into bed together.

No biggie, until Iris shows up the next morning. She’s been giving it some thought and realizes that she’s in love with Jack. Awkward.

How this mix-em-and-match-em trio comes to deal with it is the point of the story. Maybe there’s a threesome to be had here – but not as you pervs out there are thinking.

The three heart-on-a-sleeve performances hold this offbeat romantic comedy together.

Mark Duplass portrays Jack as a contradiction, angry and lovesick. He’s a big teddy bear who can’t deal with his feelings for his dead brother’s former girlfriend and is horrified by his indiscrete coupling with her sister.

Emily Blunt explains away her British accent with a dad who moved to London. As Iris, she finds herself adrift, unable to express feelings for Jack until it’s almost too late. Her girl-talk with her sister seems genuine, chattering away, not yet aware of what will seem like a betrayal.

And Rosemarie DeWitt is a switch-hitter with her own secret motives.

In the telling of this off-kilter love story Lynn Shelton resolves the impasse in a satisfying – if perhaps improbable – manner. What for lack of a better description, we’ll call a threesome.

srhoades@aol.com