A Japanese film that grows on you - although very slowly

The recent Japanese movie Our Little Sister grows on you - but very slowly. It's a film about 3 adult sisters living together - like girls in a college dorm or sorority, one remarks - in a ramshackle old house in a small Japanese coastal community; their father has just died, and their mother - long ago divorced from the father - has pretty much abandoned the girls. At the father's funeral, they meet their young half-sister, who is being shunned by her stepmother, and they invite her to come live with them - think of it as the Japanese version of Checkhov's 3 Sisters, but v 3.5. Each of the sisters has her own set of problems and issues: one drinks too much, one is employed in a retail job way below her capabilities, one is dating a married man with all of the attendant guilt, as that's exactly what broke up her parents' marriage. These issues emerge very slowly over the course of the 2+ hour movie. Similarly, the young half-sister only very gradually learns to express her hatred of her absent mother. For the most part, her transition to this new life is a breeze. In an American movie (and this may well be remade as one, I would think), all of these issues would be brought to the fore and to the boiling point right away. As the the half-sister, she enters an new school and all the kids love her and she makes the soccer team and becomes a star - whereas in an American version I'm sure she'd be bullied and would have to prove herself, etc. But give this film credit - it's paced and played much more like real life than like movie-life. I did notice that the film - a rare PG-rated film that seems primarily aimed at adults - is scrubbed clean in some ways: no sex scenes obviously but also no smoking and no use of cell-phones or electronic devices (does this purging have something to do w/ a Japanese rating code) - thought there drinking plays a pretty prominent role in the lives of the sisters and even in the plot of the film,  (the production and consumption of plum wine is part of a family tradition that holds the sisters together and even leads to a minor reconciliation with the mother who'd abandoned them). All told, it's a smart, realistic film that is worth the time span - just don't expect action, crises, or powerful emotional, soul-baring scenes (compare say with Bergman's Autumn Sonata for a mother-daughter film version with all of the latter).