‘The Good Sister’ review: Siblings face down an accusation of rape in sharp German debut

Dir. Sarah Miro Fischer. Germany/Spain. 2025. 97mins

For chaotic, unanchored Rose (Marie Bloching), a nurse in a prenatal unit, her older brother Sam (Anton Weil) is a rock. He grounds her, picks up the items, and lets her crash on his couch when her relationship along with her girlfriend implodes. He’s the one certainty in her life. So when Sam is accused of rape and Rose, who was half-asleep on the couch within the room subsequent door when the alleged assault passed off, is named to testify, it calls into query not simply Sam’s character, but in addition her personal. This achieved function debut from Sarah Miro Fischer takes an intimate have a look at conflicted allegiances; the fallible males who commit monstrous acts and the members of the family who thought they knew them.

An intimate have a look at conflicted allegiances

Intimate in scope, the image attracts a lot of its energy from Bloching’s magnetic, intuitive work within the central function. Simply as Rose is looking for solutions, so is the digital camera. There’s a kinship with Eva Trobisch’s All Is Good, one other performance-driven story of a lady coping with the aftermath of a rape. Like Trobisch’s debut, The Good Sister needs to be warmly acquired at additional festivals and can function a persuasive calling card for Fischer going ahead. Its small scale might imply it struggles to claim itself theatrically however, with the suitable distributor, this might be a speaking level launch that ought to join with youthful feminine audiences.

Bloching’s efficiency is fantastically judged, and so is the cinematography from Selma von Polheim Gravesen. The digital camera works in tandem with the actors and harmonises with the physicality of the performances. There’s an eloquent shift within the movie’s framing because the story progresses. Initially, when Rose stumbles into her brother’s residence late at evening (tellingly she has her personal key), the siblings are intertwined throughout the body. Her head on his shoulder, her legs sprawled throughout his: it’s as if the road that divides them as particular person entities is blurred.

This adjustments after the fees are made in opposition to Sam, and Rose begins to weigh her loyalty to her brother in opposition to an instinctive feminine solidarity. More and more, Rose is remoted within the shot, the gravity of what’s taking place exterior of the body enjoying out in her expression. In some ways, it is a coming of age movie, during which a younger lady who has leaned into the function of the household fuck-up abruptly realises that it’s time to be the grown-up.

There are moments within the movie during which the symbolism is maybe a little bit too overt: troubled by her personal conscience, Rose fixates on a dripping faucet in Sam’s kitchen. She tries, unsuccessfully, to repair it with a wrench. Then she opens the cabinet beneath the sink to disclose an unsavoury mess of damp stains and mildew. There’s, the movie stresses emphatically, one thing rotten beneath this seemingly benign floor.

Different scenes are simpler. One of the potent unfolds when Rose, impulsively and with out totally pondering out what she hopes to attain, visits the sweetness salon the place Sam’s accuser Elisa (Laura Balzer, making a substantial affect with simply two scenes) works. It’s clear that the younger lady recognises her – they locked eyes briefly as she was fleeing on the evening in query, one thing that Rose has flatly denied in her police assertion. However they undergo the pantomime of the salon appointment, with Rose submitting to her first bikini wax. It’s extra painful than she may have imagined. Acknowledging her discomfort, Elisa asks coldly and pointedly, “Would you like me to cease?” Each ladies perceive the importance of her selection of phrases, each one a stinging recrimination.