One not-so-little sister went to Paris to be in show business, and one stayed home in Brooklyn to run her own hair salon and raise her daughter. Now her sister from Paris is back in Brooklyn, her daughter is becoming a woman, and life has gotten very confusing.
Ayoka Chenzira's movie about how life will go on, no matter how hard you try to stop it is a mixed bag. It meets all the technical issues of a good movie, and the story is a good one. The main problem for me is Mizan Kirby as the wandering sister; I suppose she should be played a bit larger than life in the opening scenes, but it keeps up too long and is phony; she enunciates her French far too carefully, like she is in a class room, after ten years in Paris; and she does the same for the sequences in which she is in a slap-up argument with her sister, Kim Weston-Moran.
Even so, I found the movie well worth watching. There's some life in daughter Victoria Gabrielle Platt as she tries to come to terms with her adult body, despite the old ladies who brew tisanes for her, her mother's stoic advice, and her aunt's challenges. Also the secondary characters like Lee Dobson who tries to put some life into Miss Weston, and Jennifer Copeland as the salon's assistant is a warily watchful presence.
Ayoka Chenzira's movie about how life will go on, no matter how hard you try to stop it is a mixed bag. It meets all the technical issues of a good movie, and the story is a good one. The main problem for me is Mizan Kirby as the wandering sister; I suppose she should be played a bit larger than life in the opening scenes, but it keeps up too long and is phony; she enunciates her French far too carefully, like she is in a class room, after ten years in Paris; and she does the same for the sequences in which she is in a slap-up argument with her sister, Kim Weston-Moran.
Even so, I found the movie well worth watching. There's some life in daughter Victoria Gabrielle Platt as she tries to come to terms with her adult body, despite the old ladies who brew tisanes for her, her mother's stoic advice, and her aunt's challenges. Also the secondary characters like Lee Dobson who tries to put some life into Miss Weston, and Jennifer Copeland as the salon's assistant is a warily watchful presence.