Sister (2012)
Director: Ursula Meier
Country: France
Runtime: 97 min
Every day, twelve-year-old Simon takes the cable car up to the mountains
where the slopes bristle with the hustle and bustle of winter season
tourists. He pokes about in hotel wardrobes and changing rooms looking
for something to eat in rucksacks, but what he’s really after are skis
that he can turn into cash.
Whenever he talks to holidaymakers or hotel staff, he tells them that
his parents died in a car accident and that he lives alone with his
sister. Louis, the young woman who lives in the apartment in the valley
has no idea what Simon gets up to all day long. Their odd relationship
alternates between quarrels and tenderness.
Ursula Meier sets her second feature-length drama against the backdrop
of a popular tourist destination in the Alps. From the broad, anonymous
mass of people, she has distilled the story of one child who believes he
has found a way to offset his breadline existence. This portrait of a
boy on the brink of puberty, poised between deceit and an unquenchable
need for love and tenderness, is at the same time an exploration of the
contradictions and hidden depths of an ostensibly prosperous world
