If you go to enough film festivals, you soon learn that one of the most exhilarating experiences comes when you discover an outstanding performer that the world has yet to see. There is nothing quite like realizing that you’re watching a newcomer confidently command the screen as if they’ve been acting in dozens of films. At last year’s Cannes Film Festival, that star-is-born moment went to the stellar Nykiya Adams in “Bird” and this year it is the truly magnificent Nadia Melliti in “The Little Sister.”
Serving as the anchor to a drama that otherwise frequently holds you at a distance, Melliti gives an understated yet riveting performance as a young woman finding her way in the world. The film lives and dies on her shoulders, making it all the more exciting to see her carry it with such nuance. As her character begins to explore her sexuality, faith, and future, Melliti makes the most of every moment, speaking volumes even in the scenes where she has little to no dialogue. In her hands, the film becomes a layered character study from its humble start to its fitting finale.
Premiering Friday in the festival’s main competition, the film first introduces us to Fatima (Melliti) as she navigates being the youngest of three sisters, often struggling to get a word in edgewise. Her French-Algerian family is only seen in brief moments, but the sibling dynamics are so believably naturalistic that you immediately understand who each of them are and why Fatima has settled into shyness as she navigates her corner of the world.
When she goes to school and goofs around with her rather juvenile group of male friends, you see in her eyes a growing curiosity that they seem to be lacking. After a painfully fraught fight at the school, Fatima begins dating women in an attempt to discover what she truly desires. Set over the course of several seasons of her life with interjections that seem removed from time, the film follows her journey to piece together the person that she wants to be.
Based on Fatima Daas’s 2020 autofiction novel “The Last One,” the film is written and directed by actress-turned-director Hafsia Herzi, who smartly gives Melliti room to inhabit the character. From some of the relatably awkward first dates Fatima goes on to the moments of joy she experiences during her reinvention, Melliti’s quiet, often largely physical performance allows posture and small microexpressions to us insight into the internal strife that Fatima is grappling with. We can see in her every move a desire for something more, but she has to take many emotional leaps to get there.
The film is shot with an emphasis on sex as not just a physical pleasure but a way of building intimacy with oneself. Where Fatima is initially uncertain about being with women, with these encounters often concluding with shots of her standing alone, we increasingly see how she finds herself more at home with not just other people, but herself. The strong visual storytelling lets the performance shine and separates the film from more familiar “coming out” stories we’ve seen before.
Fatima’s path is never is it about coming out to other people but about discovering part of herself that she then will have to fold into the other parts of her life. Can her faith coexist with her sexuality? Can she carve out a place for herself in a religion that would rather push her out? It’s a complicated, often agonizing dilemma, but one the film handles with gentle honesty. There aren’t many big external conflicts in the story, but the internal emotional and spiritual ones resonate.
Where “The Little Sister” can prove less compelling is that some interiority feels lost in the process of adaptation. In a film that inherently has to make choices of what to cut, there still is a sense that we are being held at a bit of a remove at critical junctures. Moments that feel like they would benefit from lingering just a bit longer or by delving more deeply into how Fatima is processing what is going on are instead frequently fleeting. Some of the fragmented nature of the story is the point, as it’s about observing key slivers of time rather than the full picture, but it also holds things back ever so slightly.
What it can’t hold back is Melliti’s excellence. Though the film is only about a small part of her character’s life, it still feels as if we come to know the entire person. By the end, “The Little Sister” even utilizes athletic skills that had previously largely been only alluded to. Rather than feel incidental or showy, the scene provides a final emotional beat that allows her to be a full, complicated character even when saying nothing at all.
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