Sanna Lenken’s My Skinny Sister is an earnestly intentioned Swedish film about body image, but it wraps up its ideas glibly, like the TV issue movie of the week. At first it looks like a challenging drama about sibling rivalry and sibling dysfunction – something to compare, perhaps, with Catherine Breillat’s À Ma Soeur! or Céline Sciamma’s Water Lilies – but the promise of complexity is not fulfilled. Rebecka Josephson plays Stella, the pudgy younger sister of Katja (Amy Deasismont), sleek teen princess and school ice-skating star. Stella is in awe of Katja; she makes tragically lumbering attempts to emulate her prowess on the ice-rink and conceives an embarrassing crush on Katja’s coach. But when she discovers Katja’s bulimia, the whole dynamic between them begins to change, as does the relationship between the two sisters and their mum and dad. The stage is set for something challenging and subtle, but in the end we’re heading for a soapy TV drama, smoothly resolved. It’s frustrating, because the two central performances are good.
