Jinx Sister

2008

100 mins

Directed by Athina Tsoulis
Drama

Estranged adult sisters peel back the family secrets and lies in Athina Tsoulis' domestic drama. Sara Wiseman is Laura, who... More

Estranged adult sisters peel back the family secrets and lies in Athina Tsoulis' domestic drama. Sara Wiseman is Laura, who arrives in New Zealand after ten years in LA. Sporting an American accent and dressed for Rodeo Drive, she cuts an incongruous figure in laid-back South Auckland. She warily approaches the house of her sister Maree (Rachel Nash), happily married, heavily pregnant mother of two. Laura's hostility and thinly concealed self-loathing are too much even for this most grounded of earth mothers. While the two spar and reopen old wounds, new events force them into recognising the deceptive nature of the family myths that have shaped their enmity. [source: NZFF 08]

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Jinx Sister | Ratings & Reviews

"A rewarding film."

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Sunday Star-Times

"Some may find the premise too slight to sustain a feature - the film is at least 10 minutes too long and many scenes have characters staring out the window long after the shot has served its dramatic function. But it's a creditable local effort."

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New Zealand Herald

"Sibling dynamics can be fraught territory, and a challenge to any film-maker looking to expose and express the sources of friction. How to refresh or avoid clichés (“You were always Dad’s favourite”/“She stole my boyfriend”); how to reveal the past – flashback or exposition; and how to direct performances that are as much internal as external. With Jinx Sister, Athina Tsoulis can be proud of the way she’s risen to that challenge."

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New Zealand Listener

"Too many false notes, outrageously contrived plot points, and some woefully over-explicatory dialogue pretty much kill the film stone dead before it's far out of the starting blocks... But there is still some good stuff to Jinx Sister. The leads – especially Wiseman – are uniformly strong and committed , all of them managing to find some unlikely moments of truth in the white spaces on the page between Tsoulis's dialogue."

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