Three Sisters
(San zimei)
France/Hong Kong, 2016, DCP, color, 153 min.
Mandarin with English subtitles.
DCP source: Icarus Films
High in the remote Yunnan Mountains live three sisters, ages ten, six and four, abandoned by their mother and left largely alone by a father who must travel vast distances in search of work. This heart-wrenching portrait of family and fidelity is grounded in the remarkable intimacy of camera and subject that is Wang’s extraordinary gift, allowing us to not only observe but to seemingly be a part of the daily rituals and rhythms of the girls, who miraculously never appear to struggle against their plight, instead abiding almost entirely within the everyday. Three Sisters is one of Wang’s most stark, elemental and beautiful films; a raw, unconventional beauty derives from the truth and subtlety of the unstated but everywhere palpable bonds connecting the children and their father, despite the distances and hardships that threaten to tear them asunder.