Martin Compston: 'Sister' review, Commonwealth Games ambassador profile

Review: 'Sister'
'Sister' tells the story of a 12-year-old thief who steals from wealthy patrons of a ski resort, has a healthy seam of mischief to cut through the social commentary, writes Tim Robey

 

15 cert, 97 min
Dir: Ursual Meier; starring: Kacey Mottet Klein, Léa Seydoux, Gillian Anderson, Martin Compston.

Sister is a switch of name for the lovely new film by Swiss director Ursula Meier (Home), whose original French title, L’Enfant d’en haut, translates roughly as “The Kid From Up Above”. Said kid is Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein), a 12-year-old kleptomaniac who earns his crust stealing equipment from an Alpine ski resort.

The implications of “en haut” aren’t just topographical but also ones of class. The wealthy types up there, Simon claims, can’t care overly about their purloined stuff, because they instantly pay to replace it. We needn’t agree, of course: Meier withholds judgment, merely filling us in bit by bit on the hard-knock life Simon has been forced to live.

Taking the cable-car back down the mountain to where he stays with his broke, promiscuous and generally bedraggled sister Louise (Léa Seydoux), Simon is very much the breadwinner, selling stolen gloves and shades to other local kids for pocket money and trying to get the best price on the high-end skis he’s also managed to waddle off with.

The milieu provides a built-in disguise: wearing wraparound googles and head-to-toe outdoorwear, he’s a miniature Raffles in polyester. He cajoles his way in everywhere, and we needn’t trust the story he tells about the death of his parents in a car crash, but he’s also a bright spark, hard to dislike, and hugely vulnerable beneath it all.

In a year set to be studded with great child acting – think Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) and Tom Holland (The Impossible) – it would be a mistake to neglect Klein, who’s a marvel of puckish naturalism throughout this. Seydoux, too, does capable work as a scrounging sexpot in tight jeans, building a boisterous but fraught relationship with her co-star that keeps revealing unexpected layers. It perhaps sounds a little like a Dardennes brothers film – last year’s The Kid with a Bike comes readily to mind. But it outshines that one, because a healthy seam of mischief helps cut through the occasionally rote social comment. Meier, working with the great French cinematographer Agnès Godard (Beau Travail), finds a lonely quality in the thin mountain air, a climate that thrill-seekers inhale and evacuate to leave this invisible boy behind, converting their blessings into his loot.
Source: Telegraph

Martin's profile at Carnaby Films

 

Commonwealth Games Ambassador by Carnaby Films
The actor Martin Compston has played a diverse range of characters in his time, but his latest role is something quite unlike anything he has done before. Compston, whom Carnaby Films say hails from Greenock, will be seen on television screens all over the country in the upcoming weeks, in the first advertisement for the Commonwealth Games, to be held in Glasgow in 2014. Compston has been appointed as an ambassador for the Games although he has admitted that the offer took him by surprise.
According to Carnaby Films, Compston initially believed the offer to be a ‘wind-up’ but when he eventually realised it was genuine, was delighted and accepted it immediately. Having seen this summer, the transformative effect the Olympic Games had on London, Compston is said to be very excited about the upcoming Games in Glasgow. He remarked that the entire city of London had been given a ‘real lift’ during the Olympics and the Paralympics, and he hoped that the Commonwealth Games would have a similarly positive effect on Glasgow. It is set to be a world class event, with Mo Farah, Rebecca Adlington and Tom Daley participating.
Compston has seen some great success in front of the camera in recent years, Carnaby Films explain, particularly with Line of Duty, a police drama by the BBC. He is currently in the midst of filming a drama for ITV called The Ice Cream girls, which tells the tale of two women, who are accused of having murdered a school teacher when they were younger. Compston will also be starring with James McAvoy in Filth, a film adaption of the famous book by Irvine Welsh.
His next project is a role in The Wee Man, a film by the production company Carnaby Films, which tells the story of Paul Ferris, a gangster from Glasgow, and is due to be released in 2013. The film has already caused controversy, with some critics arguing that the way in which the characters are portrayed idealises the criminal underbelly of the city. Compston commented that he found the amount of interest in the film quite surprising, adding that he hoped that it would live up to the audience’s expectations.
Source: Carnaby Films