She desired to die and I desired her to stay and we had been enemies who cherished every different." This is how narrator Yolandi ("Yoli") describes the warfare together with her sister Elfrieda ("Elf"), in Miriam Toews` celebrated novel All My Puny Sorrows, loosely primarily based totally on occasions in Toews' personal life. Elf is a live performance pianist who has tried suicide a couple of times. Yoli, a novelist, drops the entirety to generally tend to her sister withinside the psych ward, seeking to persuade Elf that life, painful because it is, is really well worth living. But Elf has one eye on oblivion in any respect times. To her, the siren name of loss of life is louder than any concerto. 

 Toews' ee-e-book is a painful one, however, it is also funny, and sharp-witted, giving a wealthy texture to this very particular Mennonite's own circle of relatives and the approaches they cope, endure, and keep every different up (or now no longer). Director Michael McGowan has tailored Toews' ee-ebook for the screen, and effective actresses—Sarah Gadon and Alison Pill—play the sisters. While the version is, in lots of approaches, pretty skilled, the tempo of "All My Puny Sorrows" is so stately, and the general tone so reserved, that it affects an emotionally muted movie. Everything appears to be going on underwater, and this runs counter to the general situation of generational trauma, suicide, and mortality. 

 Elf and Yoli grew up in a close-knit and really controlling Mennonite network in Winnipeg. Their father Jake (Donal Logue), butted heads with the elders while he determined to allow Elf to take a look at the track in college. It triggered quite a few frictions withinside the conventional hierarchy. Jake ran up in opposition to comparable resistance in his tries to create a small library. Jake commits suicide quickly after, and their own circle of relatives has lived withinside the aftershock of that occasion ever since. The girls' mom, Lottie (Mare Winningham), is a sturdy and strong woman, who carried on alone, however, is devastated by the heavy load her daughters have needed to convey. She says to Yoli, factor-blank, "You convey quite a few sadness, and for that I am sorry." 

 When Elf finally ends up withinside the clinic after her 2nd suicide attempt, Yoli flies in from Toronto to "circle the wagons." Elf wishes Yoli to assist her to get to Switzerland wherein there's a hospital regarded for assisted suicide. The banter among the sisters is sharp and sarcastic. The of them are each well-read, and pepper their conversations with charges from D.H. Lawrence or Paul Valéry. Elf's suicide notice charges Philip Larkin's haunting and eerie poem Days. The name of the ee-ebook (and movie) comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem To a Friend, written for Charles Lamb, whose sister had fallen ill. Coleridge writes with empathy: 

 I, too, a sister had, the handiest sister —

She cherished me dearly, and I doted on her;

To her, I poured forth all my puny sorrows." 

 There is quite a few antique and complex own circle of relatives dynamics at play right here: Elf changed into the appropriate sister, Yoli the rise up who were given pregnant at seventeen, etc. Elf's husband Nick (Aly Mawji) appears supportive, but additionally pretty useless, and Elf's psychiatrist is willing to launch her from the clinic. Yoli begs him now no longer to. 

 The movie opens with Donal Logue, status on railroad tracks, gazing at an educator approaching, waiting for his personal loss of life, a loss of life he chose. It's a photograph McGowan comes again to once more and once more. "All My Puny Sorrows" is woven with collage-like fragments of this second and others, displaying the past, the 2 sisters as children, the glimpses in their sturdy bond, the toys they performed with, the woods they wandered via, and their smiles. These collages create an associative and subjective mood, setting us in Yoli's head, wherein reminiscences interfere with the present. Yoli's voiceover is used so erratically that it in no way solidifies into a real choice. The movie is actually instructed from her factor of view, however, the voiceover provides subsequent to no insight, and for lengthy sections, it falls away altogether. 

 Compare this to a movie like "'night, Mother," which has a comparable theme: a mom attempts to prevent her daughter from killing herself. In that movie, Anne Bancroft determined pleading and Sissy Spacek's realistic reality make for a very unnerving watch. You desire the mom will achieve convince the daughter to paste around. But the daughter appears so determined, that it appears like it is too late. She's already gone, really, it is simply that she wishes to tie up a few unfastened ends. Playing out in actual time, "'night, Mother" is devastating. "All My Puny Sorrows" has all of the factors to % a devastating punch, however, there may be no actual feeling of urgency. It's like humans are simply marking time, just like the quit has already been determined, it is only a be counted of resigning oneself to the inevitable. 

 The 3 actresses are splendid—mainly Pill, who inhabits Yoli's ragged insecurities with consolation and familiarity (bringing a few welcome humor to this mainly glum affair). Yoli feels very actual. The scenes together with her daughter Nora (Amybeth McNulty) are a number the fine withinside the movie, quiet and insightful. Gadon is a splendid actress, even though right here she mainly simply lies in a clinic bed, staring off vaguely and alas into the distance. There are moments when the warmth is becoming up beneath the characters—while Yoli tells Elf how a good deal she can be able to omit her, for example—however it is in no way enough. The temperature stays lukewarm.