MY SISTER’S KEEPER

DIRECTOR: Nick Cassavetes

CAST: Cameron Diaz, Jason Patric, Abigail Breslin, Sofia Vassilieva, Alec Baldwin, Joan Cusack

rating: HHHH

If there is a pain greater than the pain of losing a child, it is perhaps living with the knowledge that, irrespective of what you do, that child will die. The low-key, unheralded My Sister’s Keeper explores the pain of one such mother, the suffering of one such child and, in a touching departure, the travails of one such family.

In one of her best roles, Diaz plays Sara Fitzgerald, who determines from the moment she comes to know that her daughter Kate is suffering from leukaemia, that she won’t let her die. It doesn’t take a minute for her to accept even the option of producing a genetically engineered child, who can be the perfect bone marrow donor match for Kate. As the film goes on and Kate’s condition worsens, it is clear that Sara is going too far in her desperate refusal to accept the inevitable. But as Sara’s sister says: “I realise that you can’t give up. What would you be if you were not the crazy bitch fighting for her child to stay alive?… But perhaps you are missing the big picture.”

Then there is Anna, the “donor” child, who has been put through several painful procedures since she was a newborn to save Kate. With a kidney donation up ahead, Anna decides that she’s had enough, and hires a celebrity lawyer to get “medical emancipation” from her parents. Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine), who has an unusual grown-up serenity about her, is determined as Anna in her resolve to “decide what she wants to do with my body” but never leaves us in any doubt about her love for Kate.

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