A slight but resourceful psychodrama from first-time Dutch director Robert Jan Westdijk, Little Sister joins a growing list of micro-budgeted video projects that convert their technical liabilities into aesthetic assets. Shot on Betacam SP and told almost entirely from a subjective point of view, the film recalls Atom Egoyan's early ruminations on life in the video age, particularly Speaking Parts and Calendar, though its insights on family and obsession seem paltry by comparison. In a performance given mostly off-screen, with a few crucial exceptions, Hugo Metsers III plays a camcorder-wielding young man who pays an unexpected visit to estranged sister Kim van Kooten, a design student living in Amsterdam. Keenly aware of how the camera can be used as a means of empowerment and control, Metsers never stops his invasive taping and plots to sabotage her relationships with her lover (Roeland Fernhout) and closest friend (Ganna Veenhuysen). Considering the many disturbing implications of its story, including a childhood revelation that's telegraphed from scene one, Little Sister has a peculiarly lightweight tone, as if Westdijk were unwilling to fully engage in the material. Just the mere fact that von Kooten is constantly being filmed should cause a certain amount of psychological deterioration; in a similar scenario, the "perfect family" in Albert Brooks' brilliant Real Life unravels in front of the camera, and their participation is voluntary. Despite these shortcomings, Little Sister has plenty of compelling elements—Metsers' selective screening of his footage to gain an advantage is especially clever—but more encouraging still is the film's innovative use of video to achieve verisimilitude rather than expose budgetary restrictions.