Sister Wives (2024) Film Review: Poignantly Short

Sister Wives, the short film written, directed and starring Louisa Connolly-Burham, is exquisitely and economically paced, stylised and performed.

Louisa Connolly-Burnham’s short film Sister Wives is packed to the brim with emotion, barely wasting a second, and leaves its audience with a desire for so much more of it.

Kaidence (Connolly-Burnham) and her husband Jeremiah (Michael Fox, of Downton Abbey: A New Era) are struggling to conceive in a severely traditional, religious, isolated and controlled community. So, Jeremiah takes it upon himself to secure a second wife, and the pair ‘become three’ with the introduction of Galilee (Mia McKenna-Bruce, of How to Have Sex). At first, Kaidence is reluctant to share her home, her belongings and her marriage, but as Jeremiah leaves for a religious mission, the two women soon find themselves growing much closer than either of them expected.

The central idea of Connolly-Burnham’s short is incredibly poignant. More room to breathe would have certainly made for a very affecting feature length film, but that’s not to say Sister Wives is in any way lacking. Yes it’s incredibly condensed, and there’s not a lot of surprise to be had at its narrative progress, but it manages to avoid the pitfalls of feeling rushed by packing in so much emotive material in its twenty six minutes run time.

And that is, almost exclusively, thanks to the incredible central performances. There’s so much restraint in Connolly-Burnham’s Kaidence when she is first introduced – from her tightly braided hair to the stiff linens of her modest dress – that McKenna-Bruce’s Galilee infuses the short with spark from the second she appears on screen. Red hair tumbling over her shoulders and wearing a wedding dress that the 80s would like back, she gets Kaidence’s attention almost immediately. And it’s easy to see why.

Their progression from reluctantly and uncomfortably sharing space to giggling and acting rebelliously together is as slow as the tight timeframe allows, but the actresses sell the change wonderfully. Connolly-Burnham’s script is really well judged in its pacing, economical in its use of detail, and manages the feat of being both satisfying and unsatisfying at the same time, in the sense that while it feels complete, there is also a genuine desire to spend more time with these women when the credits roll.

Sister Wives also looks stunning, with DOP Angela Zoe Neil’s visualisation of metaphor adding even more detail into an already densely packed short. There’s a fantastic shot at the end of the film, wherein a flock of three birds split apart and fly in separate directions in a sunset sky, that beautifully encapsulates the hopeful ending. Bonus mention, also, for the genuinely laugh-out-loud moment wherein a discussion of terrible sex is followed immediately by a particularly phallic vegetable being aggressively chopped for dinner. Neil’s work is a really effective way of fleshing out the world, and allows for Connolly-Bruce to forgo a lot of dialogue heavy lifting and avoid the film becoming too bogged down or too vague.

Sister Wives is a really impressive piece of work from the writer/director/star. It is exquisitely judged, really well acted, and crafted with so much deference and detail that it feels like an impossible feat that a mere twenty six minutes is able to contain it.

Sister Wives was screened at the Kino London Short Film Festival in June 2024.