Language: Swedish/English
Director: Sanna Lenken
Slim, bonny, fat, thin, well-built, size 12, size 2, curvy, pear-apple whatever other fruit shapes, we’ve heard them all. Some revel in these adjectives, while for some others it’s their nemesis.
My Skinny Sister is a lighter look at body image perceptions, eating disorders caused by it, and the intrinsic trauma that it slowly brings about underneath an ordinary self.
Stella watches her big sister Katja, a figure-skating enthusiast gliding confidently on ice. She also sees that her sister has forsaken a lot of her favourite foods. For a while she tries to emulate her sister, keeping aside larger portions of her own food, trying to acquire an interest in figure-skating and claiming “figure-skaters can’t eat so much”. But she is quick to notice that all is not well with her sister. She eats, but deliberately pukes all of it out.
Stella’s world is in black and white. She doesn’t get the intricacies behind her sister’s problem, but has a direct view of trouble and realizes that she has to act before catastrophe strikes.
The film goes on to show how the sisters, along with their parents, deal with Katja’s anorexic, partially bulimic tendencies. How Stella flies into her naïve fantasies in and out and how Katja knots herself into a tangle that she isn’t able to loosen.
Although the frames are breezy for most parts of the movie, the drama intensifies mid-way when Katja shoots the first of the few bullets of discord. The everyday nuances of life are showcased well. The agony of the parents who aren’t sure how to approach their daughter feels at once insightful and sad.
In times when our bodies aren’t our own, but become a wistful double of those on the billboards, or the ones in numerous fitness magazines, My Skinny Sister becomes a wake-up call.
Star factors:
» Rebecka Josephson as Stella. Innocence played up with a lot of sense is her strong point.
» Sisterhood. From cute to hate, the functional and dysfunctional aspects work well.
» Crisp editing that gets you through a slightly longer-than-necessary movie.
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