Sister (L`Enfant d`en Haut) (M)

Writer/director Ursula Meier’s Sister (L’Enfant d’en Haut) is an engrossing humanist drama of two siblings struggling to find a place in the world, and their determination to maintain self-sufficiency, no matter what the cost. 12-year-old Simon (played by the astounding new-comer Kacey Mottet Klein) lives in a ramshackle apartment in an industrial valley at the base of the Swiss Alps with his restless older sister Louise (Léa Seydoux). Every day Simon takes the cable car up to the opulent ski resorts above, stealing equipment from the rich tourists to resell to the local kids back down below while his sister drifts through an aimless life of dead-end jobs and promiscuity. As Louise becomes more and more dependent on his meagre earnings, Simon ups the stakes by ingratiating himself with a wealthy tourist (Gillian Anderson) and her family, and – even more dangerously – by partnering with a crooked Scottish seasonal worker (Martin Compston). But this new-found ‘wealth’ does not transform his life in the way he imagined, and his fragile relationship with Louise fractures into dangerous new territory, with unimaginable repercussions. Against the striking canvas of the Swiss Alps, Meier adroitly explores the intimacy of two lost souls, both struggling with unique forms of