Halfway through the film, breathtakingly filmed in Washington State's San Juan Islands, I gave up trying to like what I was seeing. I opted instead to study the film as a sociological commentary. The question that kept nagging at me was, "Fifty-plus years after the rise of radical feminism (so-called "women's lib") in the United States, how is it possible that educated professional women still expect and accept so little of the men they partner with?"
Iris (Emily Blunt) is madly in love with an immature and self-confessed loser named Jack (Mark Duplass). In a key scene, Jack admits to Iris that he is nothing but a waste of any woman's time. That's just who he is and that's all Iris is ever going to get from him. Instead of fleeing to catch the next ferry back to Seattle, Iris melts and accepts his non-offer. What she is really saying yes to is being little-boy Jack's mother for the rest of his life.
Oh, yes, there a bit more to the story, but that's the bottom
line--literally, the bottom.
I left the theater shaking my head. My main worry is that this film might represent the true state of single young women in America today. Has women's lib failed so miserably? Have women given up demanding equal status with their men? Have they given up on finding truly co-responsible life partners?
What is correspondingly fascinating about all this is that this film arrives amid the Vatican's current inquisition against Catholic religious women (sisters/nuns) in the U.S. At the heart of the churchmen's fear is that these brave women have become "radical feminists" (read 'uppity,' demanding that the "boys" in their faith community grow up and be men!). I can only conclude from my viewing of Your Sister's Sister and the hierarchy's desire to purge strong women from spiritual leadership, that Roman Catholic nuns are America's last-standing daughters of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. God, bless them!
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Alfred J. Garrotto's most recent novel is The Saint of Florenville: A Love Story.
