.MOVIE LISTINGS | MOVIE REVIEW ARCHIVE | THEATER INFO Sibling Drudgery BY MOLLY TEMPLETON THE SISTERS: Directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman. Executive produced by Carolyn S. Chambers. Starring Maria Bello, Erika Christensen, Mary Stuart Masterson, Elizabeth Banks, Eric McCormack, Rip Torn, Alessandro Nivola and Chris O'Donnell. Arclight Films, 2006. R. 113 minutes. Most of the action in Arthur Allan Seidelman's film, based on a play that is in turn "suggested by" Anton Chekhov's The Three Sisters, takes place in a faculty lounge so ostentatious it doesn't simply suggest the characters' upper-crust world, it screams about it. Likewise, the characters in this tiresome psychodrama howl about their intentions, wounds and neuroses, and if they're not up to the hollering, Gary (Eric McCormack) is: A bitter politics professor, he hangs around saying the nasty things the others aren't quite willing to admit. The Sisters' thin storyline concerns the Prior family: pretty, crazy Marcia (Maria Bello); serious Olga (Mary Stuart Masterson); the baby, Irene (Erika Christensen); and their brother Andrew (a sadly meek Alessandro Nivola). Brought together for Irene's annual "surprise" birthday party, the family dissolves into fighting and drama (an affair, a meth overdose) that is less a plot than a rickety frame on which to hang overwrought conversations about truth, love, lies and self-analysis. It seems unfairly malicious to make these damaged, lonely women so utterly unlikable, but the script just keeps the nastiness coming; only tired Olga and divided but relatively honest Vincent (Tony Goldwyn) might elicit sympathy. Writer Richard Alfieri's adaptation of his own play seems to have left one foot in the theater. Things are simply different on film in ways that are not sufficiently taken into account here; when a close-up shows the rage and sadness in Bello's eyes and clenched jaw, five minutes of stilted, mannered dialogue about how angry she is feels like overkill. When things get out of hand in a hospital waiting room, it's conveniently and unbelievably empty of other anxious families. The Sisters was filmed in Eugene, making it sort of a curio for those of us who live here, but even the setting is hard to swallow. The UO as a Manhattan campus? Not quite. Despite its generally talented cast, The Sisters is a glum slog through one family's history — a family you really don't want to be trapped with for two hours.
		Table of Contents | News | Views | Calendar| Film | Music | Culture | Classifieds | Personals | Contact | EW Archive | Advertising Information | Current Issue |