Everyone Says I Look Just Like Her

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This rambling but sometimes affecting drama takes place on the shores of a Michigan lake house. Two sisters, Kaya (Jace Nicole) and Emmie (Dierdre Herlihy), come to grips with their highly divergent personalities and the 10th anniversary of the death of their mother. At the same time, they're juggling the men in their lives.

Complicating things, Kaya is apparently adopted and of Near East descent, something Emmie subtly uses as a wedge between them. At one point, stung by Kaya's admonishment that the anniversary should be about their mother and not Emmie's theatrical attempts to draw attention, Emmie challenges her: "Whose mother ... yours, or mine?"

Kaya is hard-headed but soft-hearted, while Emmie coasts on the zephyr of her whims and desires. On the bus ride from New York to Michigan, she meets Brandon (Joe Swanberg) and decides to have a fling. Their first, tawdry encounter inside a car at first seems cheap and cliched, but morphs into a revealing scene of tenderness.

Kaya's guy is Rowan, played by Ryan Andrew Balas, who also wrote and directed the film. Rowan's a sensitive artist who wants to seem confident and worldly, but his anxieties seep through his nonchalant front.

Rowan is a photographer, and spends the weekend taking pictures of Kaya and Emmie, who have little chemistry together as models, much as they do as siblings. Later, Emmie poses in a solo session that strips away her facade of flightiness, first erotically and then more profoundly.

I liked spending time with these characters, and the actors share a naturalistic vibe that feels fresh and authentic. I would guess that some portion of their dialogue was improvised.

"Everyone Says I Look Just Like Her" craves a structure, though, some kind of narrative through line to force this foursome in some kind of motion. It's one of those early efforts by a filmmaker with enough promise to make us want to see what else they can do.

3 Yaps

Everyone Says I Look Just Like Her TEASER from Ryan Balas on Vimeo.