Netflix’s new film The Snow Sister comes from Norway and is based on the bestselling childrens’ book of the same name by Maja Lunde and Lisa Aisato. The story, about a boy struggling to find joy at Christmas after the death of his older sister. With his family’s grief causing them to grow distant, he makes a new friend named Hedvig who seems at once magical and joyful, just what he needs at a time when everyone else around him is too broken-hearted to find a reason to celebrate at the holidays. But Hedvig has a secret, and as soon as Julian starts to pry into her life, he’s shocked to learn her story.
Opening Shot: “I’m going to tell you about Hedvig. The weirdest and most joyful girl you can imagine. And how she became my best friend. And how I lost her,” a young boy narrates. A school choir rehearses, but as all the other children sing, that boy, Julian, looks off into the distance, eventually stepping off his mark and walking out of the school.
The Gist: Julian (Mudit Gupta) is a ten-year-old who has been quiet and withdrawn ever since the death of his older sister, Juni. His parents are coping even worse than he is, and his younger sister Augusta looks to Julian for comfort, but he’s struggling to find any sense of joy in the face of grief. It’s even more difficult now that his birthday and Christmas are just days away.
One day after a swim practice, Julian is approached by a young girl named Hedvig (Celina Meyer Hovland), who shows up our of nowhere but instantly takes to Julian. Hedvig has a zest for life, a love of Christmas, and an enthusiasm for pretty much everything Julian does, especially swimming. She herself doesn’t know how to swim, ans she’s completely taken with his skill. Julian is initially put off by Hedwig – her utter cheerfulness and positivity is overwhelming – so he brushes her off, but soon finds himself wondering about her. He heads to the address she gave him on their first meeting, and when he finds her house, it’s a twinkly Christmas wonderland. She welcomes him inside and tells him the house’s name is Winter’s Nest and shows him around while making him cocoa and building a snowperson that they call the Snow Sister out in the yard. (This girl is essentially Buddy the Elf but for the fact that this is a post-grief drama.)
Julian begins spending all his time at Winter’s Nest with Hedvig, and while he’s drawn to the girl’s joyous spirit, he can’t help but notice some strange things afoot in and around her house. A mysterious man lurks by the front gate. No grownups are ever around. Items in the house begin to age and rot in front of his eyes. And Hedvig always changes the subject when Julian asks her anything personal. When Julian follows the mysterious old man one day, whose name is Henrik, he asks him why he hangs around Winter’s Nest without ever going in, and the man warns him to stay away from the house. But when Julian grows frustrated by Hedvig’s secrecy, he tells her they aren’t friends anymore and she simply vanishes into thin air. He races to Winter’s Next to try and find her, and when he arrives, it’s no longer the Christmas wonderland it used to be, but instead it’s an abandoned, dilapidated ruin. While he’s there, Henrik shows up. Surprised to run into Julian again, he finally explains that he owns this house but can’t bring himself to live there. Not since the death of his own sister, Hedvig, 50 years earlier.
Henrik explains that when he and Hedvig were children, they were ice skating on the fjord near their house when she fell through the ice and drowned. He tells Julian that he thinks her spirit lingers in their world because she must be angry with him for letting her die. “Maybe she just loves life too much?” Julian suggests. It’s true, Hevig can’t bring herself to leave this self-imposed purgatory because she’ll miss it too much, but her presence also haunts her brother who can’t forgive himself for her death.
Just as Henrik’s sister haunts him, the specter of Juni hangs over Julian’s home. With Henrik’s help, Julian decorates his home with drawings of Juni to remind his parents that just because she’s gone doesn’t mean she’s forgotten. And to repay Henrik for the favor, he does the unthinkable and convinces Hedvig that she needs to make peace with her own death and head off in to the great beyond instead of lingering and staying too attached to this world.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? It seems like there are a lot of children’s books-turned-movies that use the death of a dear friend as the meditation on how to live life, including one that has haunted me since childhood, Bridge to Terabithia.
Our Take: The Snow Sister is simultaneously a beautiful story of friendship and also a heavy tale of grief and post-trauma. As an adult who’s emotionally unavailable at times, this was a hard one. (Cut to me taking notes while watching: “This was a children’s book?” “Everyone’s sad 100% of the time”.)
A child forced to deal with the loss of a loved one is emotionally overwhelming on its own, but the film compounds Julian’s feelings with his parents’ sadness which is smothering. They’re not only unable to move past their daughter’s death, they’re unable to be present for their younger children, which is an all too real side effect of this kind of loss for some, but still a gut punch, since this story is told from Julian’s point of view and he’s the one that’s forced to pull his parents out of their mourning period. It feels unfair, cruel even, to put that on such a young boy, but the point of this story is that ultimately, children are the ones with the clarity in these situations.
While Hedvig is the one ray of light in Julian’s life, it isn’t until he connects with Henrik and learns that they’re both brothers whose sisters have died that Julian realizes what he needs to do to help everyone move on (including himself). While the film is essentially a metaphor for letting go of the past and opening up some space for joy in the future, there’s a lot of sorrow along the way. Depending on your state of mind and what you’re looking for in a holiday movie, what might prove to be a catharsis for some viewers might be emotional Kryptonite for others.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: Julian and his friend John, who had been trying to find the right thing to say to his grieving friend throughout the movie, have a snowball fight. After they’re done, they lie in the snow and look up at the sky together.
Performance Worth Watching: The children in this movie are astonishing. Bal Advika as Julian’s younger sister Augusta is devastating as a child who doesn’t understand the finality of death, but Mudit Gupta who plays Julian is a revelation, especially since the entire weight of this movie is on him. Gupta has mournful eyes that express sorrow in nearly every frame he’s in, but he’s such a skilled young performer that even while his face is expressing one thing, you can sense he’s also searching for hope and optimism which start to subtly creep through by the end.
Memorable Dialogue: “It’s not as if those who die just disappear. They’re still here if we remember them,” Julian pleads with his parents, who have hidden every shred of evidence that their older daughter existed, and have been unable to emote or communicate properly with their surviving children since Juni’s death.
Our Call: The Snow Sister may be one of the saddest movies I’ve seen in a long time. It’s clear early on (as an adult viewer, at least) that Hedvig is not really real, but even knowing that doesn’t assuage the feelings of dread that linger knowing that we’re going to learn the nature of her fate at some point. The film is beautifully made and wonderfully acted, and ultimately it offers a sense of hope, and for those reasons, you should STREAM IT. However, there’s an emotional toll to watching a devastated child coping with loss for over 90 minutes, so be warned that as beautiful as this film is, it might rip your heart out. Though it’s rated PG, the overall sense of grief and themes of death might be hard for some kids.
Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.
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