At the center of \u201cThe Little Sister<\/a>\u201d is a rocky romance with medical student Ji-Na (\u201cReturn to Seoul\u201d breakout Park Ji-min<\/a>), Fatima\u2019s first female lover. As with most formative and finally reciprocated queer relationships, it\u2019s one rushed into without foretelling of the consequences or one another\u2019s neuroses, or where or why one might be ahead of the other in terms of their own queer journey.<\/p>\n Titled \u201cLa Petite Derni\u00e8re\u201d in French in reference to Fatima being the youngest and last-to-fall-from-the-tree of her siblings, Herzi\u2019s film opens with Fatima washing her tawny, muscular arms and preparing for the 5 a.m. call to prayer, the only times we\u2019ll see her in full Hijab. It\u2019s an activity she\u2019s fashioned into a private one, as the other spheres of Fatima\u2019s daily life resemble any from the West. Despite beginning in ablution, \u201cThe Little Sister\u201d is anything but dogmatic; the film is just establishing her routine, the discipline needed to maintain a life of secrecy.<\/p>\n Seventeen years old, Fatima is in her last year of high school, readying for baccalaureate studies in Paris. She engages in the recognizable schoolyard chatter, smoking with her peers and talking about sex in a mixed school where Oscar Wilde\u2019s Victorian classic \u201cThe Picture of Dorian Gray,\u201d also about a protagonist staring down themselves and their sexuality albeit with much more dire and gothic ends, is on the curriculum. Fatima lives a generally Westernized life, even with her bustling family at home, who\u2019ve embraced French customs while retaining the basics of their Algerian immigrant background.<\/p>\n Refreshingly in \u201cThe Little Sister,\u201d Fatima\u2019s family isn\u2019t especially harsh or suspicious or strict, though a telling conversation at the film\u2019s end, when Fatima comes home from yet another tumultuous night out, finds her mother telling her to be careful out there or else one day she\u2019ll get assaulted. \u201cI\u2019ll assault them,\u201d says Fatima, strong in will and in physicality \u2014 a physicality that, as she enters that fateful last summer before college and even into her university days, seems a dead giveaway to some peers that she might be a lesbian.<\/p>\n Fatima bonds with a big-sister type, who tells her about \u201ceating ass\u201d and opens the door just a bit to the possibilities of the queer world awaiting outside her. Over the course of the summer, Fatima sparks a sealed-with-a-look attraction with medical student Ji-Na during a preparatory course encounter. Their psyche-erupting meet cute proves just as quickly ruinous and unraveling, and not exactly the type to set the right tone for queer encounters ahead. After a seemingly lovely night together (\u201cThe Little Sister\u201d doesn\u2019t spare in the sounds and sensations of kissing queer for the first time) Fatima emerges from Ji-Na\u2019s bedroom to find Ji-Na in a heap of herself. There\u2019s weed and benzos strewn on the coffee table, Ji-Na telling Fatima to run away fast, that she can\u2019t be fixed, implying some kind of debilitating depression or mental illness Fatima\u2019s Korean-French girlfriend was heretofore able to keep at bay.<\/p>\n Adapting an autofiction novel called \u201cThe Last One\u201d by Fatima Daas, Herzi\u2019s film strains to make the case that Fatima\u2019s romance with Ji-Na was some kind of unforgettably passionate fling. Inherently, those first queer relationships certainly can be that, but not always. When Ji-Na re-emerges in one of the film\u2019s later season chapters, begging to reconcile, saying that their relationship just moved too fast and became too overwhelming too suddenly, it isn\u2019t totally believable beyond the words she\u2019s saying. And what is one to do with someone\u2019s easy words, a former lover telling you to come back without making the right points? \u201cThe Little Sister,\u201d though, does capture that feeling where the text from an ex can torpedo one\u2019s entire night and sense of self.<\/p>\n The film\u2019s most moving and shrewdly staged sequence finds Fatima, mid-sexual-freefall in college, in the office of an imam, under the pretense of one of those \u201cso a friend of mine\u2026\u201d confessions. The unfeeling imam assumes Fatima\u2019s talking about a friend who\u2019s had an extramarital relationship with a man, but when Fatima corrects him that this friend of hers was in fact seeing a woman, the imam reminds that homosexuality is still a sin in the eyes of Islam. Though perhaps lesbian sex is less sinful since it\u2019s just \u201cfondling,\u201d and not penetrative, like the Sodomite gay men of Christian biblical history he warns of.<\/p>\n Melliti\u2019s breakout performance is arrestingly restrained but never emotionally inscrutable, J\u00e9r\u00e9mie Attard\u2019s camera holding on the actor\u2019s face in wordless moments where she slides into tears under the looming and unstoppable threat of her own repression (religious, self-induced, and otherwise) coming unbound. The film\u2019s split into five chapters (the last, in yet another spring, being the punchiest and most effective) can lead to an unbalanced narrative where certain coming-of-age touchstones are emphasized over others that deserve more attention. But together, Melliti and Herzi find a rare alchemy between actor and director telling someone else\u2019s story, but one that may turn out to be a bit of each other\u2019s own.<\/p>\n Grade: B-<\/p>\n \u201cThe Little Sister\u201d premiered in Competition at the Cannes<\/a> Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution. Mk2 Films handles sales.<\/p>\n Want to stay up to date on IndieWire\u2019s film\u00a0reviews<\/a>\u00a0and critical thoughts?\u00a0Subscribe here<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings \u2014\u00a0all only available to subscribers.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The worst trauma for a queer person \u2014 other than homophobia pressing in from the outside world \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[5839,77,3063,3943,6082,48871,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-106729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-cannes","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-film","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-reviews","13":"tag-the-little-sister","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114518474644394441","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/AmPavView_675c18.jpg\")
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