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Warning: “My Sister’s Keeper” Is Out to Get You

July 1, 2009 by Svetlana

Everyone has their forte and crying at movies is mine.
Its a talent passed on to me from my Mother, who used to cry so much during “Imitation of Life” and other Douglas Sirk type melodramas as I was growing up that my Father used to joke we’d all get rheumatism from the excess of moisture in our house.
Anyway, when it works, it really works.
When it doesn’t work, it REALLY, REALLY SUCKS.
But I always look forward to it.
So, this past Friday, on opening night, after a long, slightly torturous week, plied with 2 glasses of wasabi white wine and in the company of some like-minded friends I ventured bravely to the “My Sister’s Keeper”, a new movie starring Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Jason Patrick, Alec Baldwin and Joan Cusack (no John), based on a novel of the same name by Jodi Picoult and (I am certain) sponsored by Kleenex.

Here is the trailer:

The story in short is this:
Cameron Diaz and Jason Patrick are beautiful, young, in love, with great jobs, a great home and 2 great, adorable blonde children. Then-one day, just like that, they discover that their little girl has a rare strain of leukemia and neither the parents nor her brother are a match. So they do what they felt they needed to do to save their kid: they conceive another girl, a perfect match who since the womb becomes a donor to her sister: blood, bone marrow…anything.
Fast forward 11 years and the sick sister, Kate, is 16; Anna, the miracle child is 11 and the family revolves around Kate’s survival. She now needs a kidney and Anna, out of nowhere, seemingly, does not want to give it to her. She files for medical emancipation.

And from then on out the floodgates open.
Everyone in the movie does a solid job of acting (even if you know you’re totally suspicious of Cameron Diaz now playing a mother to teenagers), dealing with unabashedly emotional material and not an eye is dry in the house. BUT, I swear, I promise, I pinky swear you guys, it is a good movie. Not as good as the genius of say “Goodfellas” or “Heat” or other movies that are just good movies, but a good movie in the sense that they never let go of elementary moviemaking quality and storytelling for the sake of (pure) schmaltz (”Nights in Rodanthe” and “A Walk to Remember”-I’m looking at you here).

There definitely is schmaltz a-plenty but it is handled with care, and kudos to Nick Cassavetes for that (he does a way subtler job than in “The Notebook”, here). It also has the panache not to attach all your tears (and there are plenty of tears to go around) to the obvious thing: the dying child.
No, it artfully spreads your emotions around all the topics that could possibly pull at a person’s heartstrings: the neglected other children, the normal family in unhuman pain, the first love (when both kids are 15 and have cancer, it all becomes extra poignant when you hear “Its her new boyfriend. They go to borders and read books. Its super nerdy. Wanna see a picture?”), the (unbreakable) sibling love, the loss, the fear we all have that we may not be doing enough for those we love, the painful feeling of being caught in the middle of something that is bigger and greater than you, and finally-the pure joys of everyday, loving family life, which are all the more poignant because they’re set to the backdrop of unbearable sadness.

I did not cry. I BAWLED.
Full on, crocodile size tears rolling down my cheeks, those napkins you use to wipe your hands with after popcorn, soaked wet, Becca holding my hand, my shoulder, possibly even patting my head at some point.
It was amazing.
Cathartic and real and oddly not too melodramatic (I hate melodrama, I always feel its cheating your tears out) and leaving you feeling both drainer and with a new appreciation for just how meager your problems are in comparison.
Which is all I sometimes want in a movie.
Go see it.

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