Sister / L'enfant d'en haut (Ursula Meier, 2012, Switzerland)

This film somehow feels a lot like Meier's last film, Home. The main character here is 12 year old Simon, who seems to support himself and, to some extent his sister, by stealing from tourists at the nearby ski resort. Much of the film is him going up to the top of the mountain and stealing skis and so forth. He's staying with his sister, and things seem off, and they are. A lot of the films I saw at the film festival seem to consider those people in the society whom the larger society fails. It was kind of hard for me to watch, though I'm not sure everyone would feel the same way. Anyway, it's Switzerland's submission for the 85th Academy Awards.

B

Boys Are Us (Peter Luisi, 2012, Switzerland)

For me, the main reason for watching this movie if you were interesting in seeing Zurich on film, or hearing the various ways that Swiss German, one of the more well preserved German dialects, is mingling with modern slang and so forth. But then, I'm guessing people with a minor in German linguistics are probably a small market.
It's a fairly entertaining teen soap opera that seems like it would belong more on television than in the cinema. It's kind of a banal story of a young woman scorned, her crazy sister, and the boys that fall prey to their vengeance. Of course, as a female, you know before the film even begins that the girl be a victim of her own vengeance, because of course. The film is supposedly elevated by its odd concept which I don't particularly understand the point of. It's a curious enough movie to warrant streaming online and the actors are engaging, but I don't know that I'd recommend paying $11 to see it, as I did.
C