If there’s a starmaking vehicle this summer, it’s The Hangover. I mean the My Sister’s Keeper. Teenagers Abigail Breslin, Sofia Vassilieva and Evan Ellingson are knockouts, and carry the film’s heavy, adult level material with remarkable skill. Cameron Diaz goes against type in a beautifully executed dramatic role, which changes her game and probably will change her career.
Nick Cassavettes’s take on Jodi Picoult’s book about a girl dying of cancer is thoughtful and unsentimental. It varies from the book in major ways. But taken on its own terms, it has a quiet and relentless power to move. Try not crying! And it’s not just a sob inducing dramatic closer, it’s the total journey as, over and over again, moments change lives and stir emotions.
Diaz and Jason Patric are parents of a child with leukemia (Vassilieva), who conceive a second child as a spare parts factory. The baby (Breslin) is carefully engineered - ‘I was created in a dish’ -so that she can provide an endless source of tissue, blood and cells to repair her sister.
It seems like a horrific thing to do, to bring a child into the world to serve a sibling, but the parents fail to see beyond their need to keep their daughter alive. The baby endures constant surgeries and donations for her sister, clearly without having given consent and with no end in sight.
We meet the family as her mothers preparing her for a double surgery – the youngest child is to donate her kidney to her sister. She didn’t count on a rebellion and is floored when the younger daughter refuses. “I don’t want to be careful (after I lose my kidney). I’m important too. I just don’t want to do it anymore’, she says. So she hires a lawyer (Alec Baldwin) to sue her parents for medical emancipation.
Cassavettes looks carefully and lovingly at each family member showing us an array of good intentions and the fallout. Diaz’ mother is obssessed, caring only her elder daughter’s progress. She has little regard for her younger daughter or son, who stays away from home because he can’t bear to watch what his mother is doing.
Cancer’s devastation is shown with unblinking candor – the medications, illnesses, the mindset of knowing one’s time is limited, and the effect on those who love and are loved. Cancer’s always an awful thing, but the patient’s tender age adds sting.
Cassavettes (The Notebook and Alpha Dog) knows how to deliver an organic, emotional punch without being obvious. He knows how to direct actors to the next level.
So why go to a film about a dying child? It’s uplifting, thought provoking and it’s alive with great performances. It’s also about love and the many forms it takes.
Written by Jeremy Leven, Nick Cassavettes, Jodi Picoult Directed by Nick Cassavettes
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