Rating: 5.5/10

Director: Nick Cassavetes
Writers: Jeremy Leven and Nick Cassavetes (screenplay), Jodi Picoult (novel)
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, Alec Baldwin, Jason Patric, Sofia Vassilieva, Joan Cusack

Every family is different, and every family has its own pain. In MY SISTER’S KEEPER, the very obvious pain of a child suffering from leukemia turns into a cipher for many other familial pains. It’s a film that could easily be cried through; a film that, from the get-go, will obviously not have a happy ending. But there are weaknesses within the film that keep it from reaching real emotional heights.

Despite the fact that MY SISTER’S KEEPER has, overall, a very strong cast, the film eventually sort of gives itself over to Cameron Diaz’s Sara Fitzgerald. This is a mistake. Sara is a complex character, a mother who has spent nearly fourteen years constantly living on the verge of losing her child. She is also feisty to the point of annoyance, always being reminded by those around her that she doesn’t listen to anyone else, that she’s a bitch, that she doesn’t understand how to back down from anything. Diaz is ill-equipped as an actress to marry these two very different parts of Sara into a sympathetic character. Her Sara is without the essential emotional depth to pull off such a role, she instead spends the entire film either screaming or crying, neither with any real resonance.

The real surprise in MY SISTER’S KEEPER is Sofia Vassilieva as the terminally ill Kate. While much of the first half of the film focuses on the rest of her family, when we finally get to know Kate, it’s a an unexpected treat. Her emotional highs and lows seem much more believable than Diaz’s; when she screams or cries, there’s real weight to the scenes. Kate is, strangely enough, the most mature character in the film. She’s quite often the only one who is realistic about how all of this is going to end. And when things get really bad, she’s the bravest person in the room.

As MY SISTER’S KEEPER is based on a novel of the same name, it’s hard to not compare the two. Cassavetes does well in dividing the film into different voice-overs and sections for most of the main characters – a similar device was employed in the book in order to give the work a full scope. But the film lacks some of the best parts of the book – Campbell Alexander’s quick wit, a deeper exploration of Sara and Brian’s marriage. And, as was widely reported when the film was shooting, the ending has been changed. Make no mistake, it’s a massive change, it’s a change that absolutely redirects the entire message and point of the story.

Taken on its own, MY SISTER’S KEEPER is a very sad story. It’s a brave story to tell in modern cinema, it doesn’t have clear winners or losers, there is no side that is right or wrong, nothing blows up except people’s lives, and it doesn’t seek to tie everything up with a neat little bow. It’s messy, like real life, where tragedies like this happen every day.