A Tale of Two Sisters

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Janghwa, Hongryeon (A Tale of Two Sisters)

July 8th 2010 02:21

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) is a ghost story in the guise of a domestic family tragedy. The literal English translation of the original title is Rose, Lotus, nicknames for Su-Mi (Su-jeon-Lim) and Su-Yeon (Geong-young Moon), sisters both in their young teens who share a close bond. The movie is told mostly from the perspective of the older sister Su-Mi, who at movie’s start is being counseled at a psychiatric clinic where she has been recovering from deep shock. She is reunited with her father Bae Moo-heyon (Kap-su Kim) and her stepmother Eun-joo (Jung-ah Jum) at her lakeside home, but all is not well, and not just in Su-Mi’s disturbed mind.

Su-jeon Lim as Su-Mi

Writer/director Ji-Woon Kim has constructed a careful and deliberately slow-paced descent into the deluded mind and fractured psyche of Su-Mi while providing curious alternate perspectives from the stepmother and from young Su-Yeon. The father’s role is rendered to the sidelines, he is effectively ineffectual, yet provides the story with a pillar of normalcy. He is a broken man, attempting a new life, but refuses to wear his heart on his sleeve. It is the stepmother who injects the story with real intrigue; she comes across as a manipulative, iron-fisted, and cold-hearted woman, yet despite her emotional abuse on the sisters, there is something far more disturbing chipping away at the fabric of reality within this household.

Geong-young Moon as Su-Yeon

It is the performances that drive this movie, especially those of the two sisters and the stepmother. Despite some confusing scenes, especially one where a couple are invited to dinner and the wife begins to choke on the food, then falls into a epileptic paroxysm for no apparent reason. Yet there is a frightening image that concludes this scene which shifts the focus back to the supernatural edge that has been permeating the movie’s atmosphere. It’s a delicate balance that director Kim maintains, and it is to his credit as a dramatist and to eliciting such riveting work from his actors that the story isn’t bogged down in tedious exchanges of mistrust and confusion, which is thematically the movie’s anchor.

Kap-su Kim as the father

A Tale of Two Sisters is embedded with symbolism and clues to the reality of the situation, but on first viewing many of these visual elements may not be so obvious. The cinematography is superb; pale muted colours and shadows, and the production design is also top notch. Kim’s mise-en-scene of line and form is fantastic, almost classical in design. But one of the lingering elements to the movie is its melancholy and sadness, which is entrenched from the start. As I said, this is a tragedy (but then aren’t most good ghost stories?). The psychology of the story seems to exude directly from the characters, almost from the woodwork of the beautiful house.

Jang-ah Jum as the stepmother

As good as all these elements are, the last ten or so minutes dissipates in dramatic intensity, the interpretation of what has happened lending itself to ambiguity, which isn’t a bad thing, but there is a black cloud of confusion which threatens to drown the story’s carefully calibrated smudged-clarity up to this point. There is definitely poetry at work, but at the risk of being unrewardingly vague. I must mention that there are a couple of terrific scares on par with the best of any effective J-Horror. The main one is a nightmare Su-Mi has which involves a floating doppelganger and long black hair obscuring a face (um, Ringu?). Damn, it was super-spooky! A few “Boo!”s are thrown in for good measure.

A Tale of Two Sisters was remade by Hollywood (surprise, surprise) as The Uninvited (2009). I saw that first, and actually found it okay, even above average. Of course, I wasn’t comparing it to the South Korean original. Now that I can compare, the two movies are actually quite different, although sport much of the same narrative arc. There are dramatic and suspense elements of the remake that I prefer, but there is a superior supernatural edge to the original, as well as a dreamy darkness that floats with quiet menace that eludes the remake.

Here’s the trailer:

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Posted By: Bryn - Category: movie reviews

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Comments

11 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Anonymous

July 8th 2010 03:30

looks promising

Comment by Catherine Stebbins

July 8th 2010 03:35

Thoughts from a Cinephile
Thoughts from a TV Watcher

Great review. This was what got me into South Korean cinema as it led me to a bunch of research on the country and its film industry. I wrote my final paper as an undergrad on a comparison study with this and The Uninvited. While I think the remake could have been worse, I pretty much found it to be a total piece of crap outside of Emily Browning's presence.

I agree with everything in your review. The ambiguity veers dangerously close to ruining a lot of what it built up because, like you said, while what we are seeing is clearly effective, at a certain point we are not getting as much out of it. I have seen it twice though and I must say after knowing how ambiguous that last section gets made me like it more a second time. The deliberately slow pace is so successful! : )

Comment by Bryn

July 8th 2010 06:11

Horrorphile

Cheers Catherine ... Perhaps if I watched the remake again now I would find it be less than what I remember, however, I went into The Uninvited knowing very little and with low expectations (it was a PG-13 flick too), apart that it was a remake of a South Korean movie. And I came out thinking, well, that beguiled me and I actually quite enjoyed the performances and the twist (and it helped that I found the older sister pretty spunky, but hey ...)

Comment by David O'Connell

July 8th 2010 07:11

Screen Fanatic

Great stuff Bryn, and yeah this is a top-class chiller. Scared the crap out of me the first time I saw it actually and because it's so good I've deliberately avoided going anywhere near the remake.

To be honest, Kim can't do any wrong for me, and with this, A Bittersweet Life and The Good, The Bad, the Weird, he's responsible for three of my favourite Korean films. A brilliant stylist no matter what type of film he tackles - and they've virtually all been different. I still really need to hunt down his debut, The Quiet Family which Takashi Miike remade with such insane, inspired genius as The Happiness of the Katakuris.

Comment by ShaunK

July 8th 2010 15:56

Screen Adventure

Very nice!

Comment by Bryn

July 9th 2010 01:21

Horrorphile

Cheers guys, sounds like I need to watch some more of the director's work ...

Comment by ShaunK

July 9th 2010 01:36

Screen Adventure

'A BitterSweet Life' is god, Good The Bad The Weird is so so so much fun!

Comment by bloggingamerican

July 9th 2010 10:47

Blogging American
ZENtertainment

Great review Bryn. Makes me want to watch it...during the day. The trailer looks amazing. Can I find this at my local movie store or where could I find it?

Comment by Bryn

July 11th 2010 02:46

Horrorphile

Cheers blogyank (excuse the abbreviation),
Being a foreign "arthouse" horror it may not be at your local Blockbuster, but then again it might, since it got a Hollywood makeover. The director is a respected and successful South Korean filmmaker so there's no reason why this movie shouldn't be included in any good video store. Good luck!