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My Sister's Keeper

A tearjerker about an eleven-year-old girl, Anna (Abigail Breslin) suing her parents for emancipation of her body so that she can’t be made to donate her kidney to her cancer-ridden older sister… This is not the kind of movie I would normally pay to see, I have to admit. That said, in some respects this family melodrama did exceed my low expectations.

Co-written and directed by Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook) from Jodi Picoult’s best-selling novel, My Sister’s Keeper takes an exotic situation and treats it as if it were universal.

In some respects it is.

Anna was a test-tube baby designed to be harvested for the blood, marrow and organs she can provide to keep her sick older sister alive. I guess there are situations like this, but not too many surely?

The film is related in subjective flashbacks from each of the family’s five characters: Anna, Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), their brother and parents Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian (Jason Patric).

At first Anna’s decision to repudiate her parents’ wishes and her sister’s last chance is enigmatic. We see that she loves Kate, and vice versa. At the same time her rationale is convincing: her own childhood has been blighted by the constant demands on her body; she doesn’t want to give up her kidney and be careful the rest of her life; she wants to be like everyone else.

The movie also traces in hints of the fractures running through this family. Sara is so dedicated to fighting for Kate she’s allowed the disease to dominate the household. She takes Anna’s stand as a vindictive betrayal. Brian is more sympathetic, but frankly bewildered.

We also get more than enough flashbacks establishing how loveable Kate is; what a resilient and brave soul she has; how thoughtful she is; even how she experienced a love affair with a fellow cancer-patient. (Actually a very touching mini-movie in itself.)

The character is probably too good to be true, but Vassilieva smiles through so valiantly, you would have to be a prize cynic to resent her.

The acting is the movie’s real strength. Cameron Diaz doesn’t usually get to play these kinds of meaty dramatic roles but she commits herself to it with real will, and never sugarcoats a sometimes disagreeable but very tough, singleminded and utterly believable mom.

Jason Patric, in contrast, is a model of subtlety and underplaying, and equally effective as Diaz’s foil.

Alec Baldwin has the most flamboyant part as the lawyer Anna finds after seeing his TV commercials, and who takes the case pro bono for reasons of his own, and you would be hard pressed to think of an actor who could do it better. And Breslin is a reliably interesting young actress, someone who conveys intelligence without ever having to say very much. Her eyes do her talking for her.

Still, though, Cassavetes will keep over-egging the pudding (even if the original sin lies with the novel). Was it really necessary that the judge listening to the case (Joan Cusack) should be getting over the tragic loss of her own daughter? Wouldn’t the story’s ethics have been that much more challenging if Kate wasn’t such a golden child – if, for instance, she was making everyone’s life hell?

Certainly the movie might have been much improved with the excision of the syrupy muzak cover versions that Cassavetes spreads over montage sequences at 15-minute intervals.

Mind you, by the egregious standards of cancer movies – I think the last one was The Bucket List – at least My Sister’s Keeper doesn’t prettify terminal illness. Or at least, not so badly as most.

Nick Cassavetes’ father John died at the age of 59 after a long struggle with cirrhosis of the liver, and his daughter has also suffered from a heart condition. You can see, watching the movie, that he has spent time in hospital bedrooms, smelled the smells, known the frustrations.

Fans of the book will also want warning that the ending has been changed. Not for the worst, to my mind, but even so the plotting remains a bit glib and manipulative. In the integrity of its characters, the film transcends such contrivance.

Tom Charity
Tom.charity@lovefilm.com

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