WARNING: Your body will betray you if you see this film when; tired, emotionally drained or if you have a cold. You will sob uncontrollably. It won’t be your fault. No matter your mental strength, you won’t be able to stop it. Do not panic, it is not a comment on the strength of the film.
The plot for My Sister’s Keeper is very promising. Anna (Abigail Breslin) was born, with scientific help, to be a genetic match for her severely ill sister. Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), who has been battling leukaemia since she was a toddler, has survived due the blood and bone marrow she has received from Anna. Now fifteen, Kate is slowly dying from renal failure. Expected to donate her kidney, eleven year old Anna, decides to sue her parents for medical emancipation.
Author of the highly successful novel, Jodi Picoult, has picked up on a very real concern people have over body ownership. It is a hot topic, which people are both terrified of and fascinated by. The problem is – this is not a film about child rights or medical ownership, it is a family drama, not so much concerned with the big issues as hitting the emotional buttons. There is no other way to describe this film than manipulative. From the opening sequence to the final credit, the film has one agenda- to make you cry; stuffing a lump down your throat for the majority of its 109 minute running time.
My Sister’s Keeper pulls no emotional punches. You would think that cancer is a substantial enough topic but the layers of misery that are placed on the characters, artificially heightening the stakes, borders on ridiculous. Why the addition of epilepsy, dyslexia and a bereaved judge to the basic plot are necessary, is anyone guess. The strain that illness places on a family is an interesting subject, and this is what director, Nick Cassavetes (of Notebook fame) has tried to focus on. Feeling more like a midday movie than a Hollywood drama, the material that the cast has to work with is not very truthful or sophisticated. Why couldn’t the filmmaker have the bravery to present the characters as real people? The young adults; Anna, Kate and Jesse (Evan Ellingson) are all disturbingly nice – has Cassavetes ever met any teenagers? The audience is intelligent enough to empathise with someone who has cancer; their goodness shouldn’t need to come into it.
Perhaps the bashing of this film is a tad unbalanced. The acting is perfectly good. No-one does anything extraordinary, but there are no weak links in the ensemble. There are intriguing aspects of the story. The romance between Kate and Taylor (Thomas Dekker) is nicely handled. Staying the right side of sickly-sweet, this storyline shows at least a little more to the character of Kate than cancer and selflessness. Cassavetes gives the film a very different ending to the book, which seems to have angered Picoult and some of her fans. Though many people may disagree, this is the best thing he did with the adaptation; ditching the contrived book ending gives the film at least the semblance of reality.
The big question is why would you want to put yourself through a film like this. If you are not a Picoult fan, why see this depressing snot-fest of mediocrity? Perhaps if you want an arena to unleash your emotional turmoil or if you are interested in seeing the book you love adapted on screen? Either way you can cry your little heart out for almost 2 hrs and no one will judge you for being slightly unhinged.
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Director Nick Cassavetes
Starring; Abigail Breslin, Sofia Vassilieva, Cameron Diaz, Jason Patric, Thomas Dekker, Evan Ellingson, Alec Baldwin and Joan Cusack.
Australian Release date is 30th July
