Why this? Why Now? Interview with Louisa Connolly-Burnham, Director of Sister Wives (2024)

Photo courtesy: Thomas Elliot Wood

Louisa Connolly-Burnham's Sister Wives explores the uncanny nuance of the American Dream, distorted and confined within the isolated vacuums of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), where modernity is rejected and women are relegated to domestic servitude and childbearing. Amid an age of nonlinear female liberation—both chronologically and geographically—Burnham tells the story of two sister wives, Kaidence (played by Burnham herself) and Galilee (Mia McKenna-Bruce), who are forced to serve the same man but, through their love for each other, begin to permeate the modern world. 

In an interview with Pi Media, Burnham explains her anxiety about ‘how relevant Sister Wives has become, particularly in the last few weeks of American politics, and where we stand now with female bodily autonomy.’ 

Films like Sister Wives are crucial to a human civilization that will only confuse its descendants with its distorted timeline of development, politically swinging backwards and forwards, left and right. Filmmakers like Burnham acknowledge that female oppression is still very much an integral part of many societies. 

Sister Wives drowns its audience in a world of quotidian pilgrim life, with stoic women in prairie dresses standing against their agrarian mise-en-scène. Foolishly, we accept the oppression depicted, thinking it’s just your average 19th-century colonial narrative—the flu of our ancestors that men naively believe has left only a tickle in the throats of American women today. But when Galilee reveals her secret Nokia phone, we emerge from the water, gasp for air, and understand that this story takes place in 2003. The year when many reading this took their first breath in this world. 

‘I wanted the audience to realize that it was more contemporary than they thought it was. The Nokia 3310 was the first phone I ever had, so I have a lot of nostalgia around that item. There's a similar plot twist in a film called The Village, so I wanted to pay homage to that.’ 

By nightfall on her first day in her new home, Galilee is beckoned to the bed of Kaidence and Jeremiah to consummate her marriage. In the following sequence, we see a long shot of Galilee sitting outside, scrubbing her bloody sheets and mourning silently. The scene echoes the feminist theory in Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, where she depicts the loss of virginity as always traumatic. Even if consensual, she describes it as a violation of one’s body in some manner and ultimately a submission to the compulsion of men to ‘consider the wife as his personal property.’ Virginity, in most cultures and equally in media, is always presented as a sense of loss, and Galilee sitting there washing her own sheets is a beautifully illustrated painting that encapsulates this grieving. 

‘We are taught about sex education and anatomy in the UK. Despite that, it's still scary and often painful to lose your virginity, even when there's consent involved and it's with someone you love. So, imagine being in that environment where you literally have no idea what's about to happen to you. Sometimes you’re as young in these FLDS marriages as 12 years old, often being forced into marriages with men that you don’t know, don't like and are a lot older than you. It looks to me when Galilee is washing those sheets that she is shameful’. 

Burnham goes on to quote French activist Gisele Pelicot whose husband ‘of 50 years is on trial for drugging her periodically and inviting dozens of men into their home to rape her while she was unconscious.’ She says, ‘Shame must change sides’. 

A silent narrative reflects the quiet, quotidian lives of women in the FLDS. The tension reaches its climax when Kaidence and Galilee make love. At this moment, the silence is broken, and music begins to play, signifying the ultimate rebellion. ‘I think silence can create a lot of tension. Perhaps sometimes music is used as a crux to add life to something, but you have to hope that the performances, the story, and the cinematography can hold their own. In the sex scene, in particular, it felt like a good moment to bring in that extra layer, that extra element. So, as the audience—particularly when you're watching it in a cinema—you feel like you can sense their love, energy, and excitement in every part of you, making it an all-encompassing experience. Which is hopefully what it feels like for them as well.’ 

When their love is exposed and Galilee is sent away, we see a montage of Kaidence’s attempts to resume her previous life, pensive and mourning her fleeting moment of liberation. Synth music plays as we step into the mind of our protagonist, observing her trapped in her 19th-century mise-en-scène while whispers of the 21st century call her name. This image perfectly mirrors life in the FLDS church: existing in the past, pulled by the future. These women are trapped in limbo, navigating their place while being held back in a world that moves forward without them. 

‘I wanted to approach it differently from how I had seen it in other period drama-like films. I approached it with more of an electronic, shoegaze kind of synth-wave vibe. Because that kind of music reminds me of Cadence and Galilee better. Everything they’re feeling—all that energy and excitement they feel toward each other—they’re brimming with eroticism and romanticism. They’re falling in love, and it’s terrifying, scary, and exciting. The music I chose felt more aligned with that than a violin.’ 

In the process of being turned into a feature film, the ripple of Sister Wives has only just begun. During her interview with us, Burnham states: 

‘I will try not to ruin too much about the feature, particularly as the draft that we have is ever revolving and will probably be evolving even throughout the shoot. But the first act is Cadence and Jerimiah’s love story, the second act is Cadence and Galilee’s love story, and in the third act, as it stands, we will get to experience them go out into 2003. That is the plan at the moment. I won’t say much more than that. What I’m really excited about at the moment is exploring more of the church and more of the community and seeing more of those dynamics. It’s going to be exciting, I’m really looking forward to making the feature.’ 

So why Sister Wives? Why this narrative? Why now? These are all questions contemporary media consumers might ask. Why should we consume stories of suffering when our own lives are already saturated with corruption and adversity? Why not spend our leisure time scrolling through Netflix, enjoying the comforts of the latest Hallmark romantic comedies? To that, I present the argument of urgency—urgency in taking action, urgency in passive action, urgency in Louisa Connolly-Burnham making Sister Wives, urgency in my writing of this article, and urgency in your reading it. 

Every moment that passes—within a web of interconnected, implicit tunnels spanning the globe—there is a young girl forced to marry a man thrice her age, a girl denied social mobility through education, or a girl compelled to abandon her education due to a pregnancy she has no power to terminate. Every moment that passes, women are raped, abused, marginalized, catcalled, groomed, harassed—and subjected to so much more that listing it all would be both twisted and infinite. 

The urgency lies in our actions; it lies in the media we consume and create, the conversations we have, and the anger we feel. Margaret Atwood did not wait until every single American woman was stripped of their rights and reduced to a vessel of reproduction through rape to write The Handmaid’s Tale. And as women, we did not wait to live this fate before we read it. 

So, why wait to watch Sister Wives?