THE DUKE ON
A TALE OF TWO SISTERS
A TALE OF TWO SISTERS
There are plenty of sisters a man might feasibly wish to spend
an evening with. The Staple Sisters, perhaps, or maybe even
The Sisters Of Mercy, although you’d hope they wouldn’t open
their damn mouths the whole time they were with you, lest they
blight your ears with god-awful synth-goth bollocks. A buncha
nuns, also, would be welcome in Mondo Towers any day of the
week, especially those fucked-up ones from The Devils.
“Get down off the damn telly, would you ever? What the hell
are you doing with that religious icon, anyhow? God almighty,
various nuns, you folks are whacked to the teeth, is the truth
of the matter.”
The two sisters who serve as the main protagonists, and also
the title, of Kim Jee-Won’s masterpiece A Tale Of Two Sisters,
though… I don’t think I’d be too keen on having them around
for, say, a dinner party or an orgy or whatever might be on
that particular evening.
It’s not really their fault, however, the fact that a fella
mightn’t wish to be in their company for too long. Some fucked
up incident of some sort has obviously occurred, something
deranged and demented, and whatever it was, it’s probably got
something to do with that step-mother they so dislike, and
probably also something involving the freaky woman who comes
into their bedroom at all hours, or maybe hides below the
kitchen sink.
A Tale Of Two Sisters isn’t all that comfortable with dishing
out a plot point or two. Where some folks might want to have
lines like “Oh, here comes father”, or “Look! It’s the step-
mother we don’t like one damn bit”, Kim Jee-Won would rather
you sorted that kinda shit out in your own time. He ain’t got
a frame’s worth of room for that kinda expository nonsense,
not when there’s lingering shots of folks sitting by a pool to
get on with, or maybe somebody on a swing.
This utter refusal to whore out the narrative to any old
motherfucker is actually something of a treat, let it be
stated for the vinyl. You can’t take a damn thing for granted
in A Tale Of Two Sisters. What you thought you knew about
relationships between the four principal characters, and also
the two folks who show up at one point so as the lady can have
a nasty episode of some sort and puke all over the floor, you
find it all to be open to interpretation. Is she married to
him, you’re thinking? What are about those two, who the hell
are they? Why’s everyone so pissed off at her? Why does she so
dislike the other one?
That kinda nonsense rattles about in the skull until well
after the credits, and then you watch it again a couple times
on account of not only do you wanna figure this stuff out, but
also, the flick is a motherfucking masterpiece.
What you can go ahead and get on with, if you feel like it of
an afternoon, is adding A Tale Of Two Sisters to that rather
short list of Fairy Tale Horror Movies, the likes of The
Company Of Wolves or Bride Of Frankenstein or Willard, horror
flicks that are just as enchanting and just as subversive as
those tales about somebody or other gets thrown out their home
and ends up in some forest mincing around with all sorts of
otherworldly beasts.
There was that other one, too, Snow White – A Tale Of Terror,
which snubbed the singing dwarves and talking deer of the
Disney version for a much more Sigourney Weaver-based
approach. It was alright.
To this end, in A Tale Of Two Sisters, we get the events
taking place in a gorgeous, gothic mini-mansion, the kinda
place where television sets and phones and shit like that seem
like horrific intrusions, digital remnants of the nowadays,
amidst all the otherworldly tranquillity.
The flick is actually based on a Korean folk tale, Janghwa And
Hongryun, so this all makes sense. In case you didn’t know,
folk tales differ from fairy tales in that fairy tales are
stuff you read to your children, possibly involving giants,
and a folk tale is something anthropological types like to
study and maybe write a thesis on somewhere along the line.
They include giants and shit also, but usually the giant is
really a penis, or maybe “Mother”.
I haven’t read the source tale, so I don’t know how faithful
this all is. I doubt there was a psychiatric hospital in the
original, to be honest. In those days you probably just tied
someone to the farthest tree in the forest, and hoped they
sobered up at some point, or maybe you burned them in the
village square. If they happened to be hilarious types, like
Jim Carrey in Me, Myself And Irene, then probably you would
leave them in a tavern, so as they could entertain drinkers
with all sorts of goofy bullshit.
A Tale Of Two Sisters is being marketed as a horror flick, and
it is, but it’s more of the growing-unease type deal than,
say, the shit yourself rotten type epitomised by the Ju-On
series. There’s a bit with a freaky, jerky-limb woman as per
usual, but it’s pretty brief. This is more like The Others, in
that it just wants to fling you into a Bad Motherfucking Place
and then pinch you every so often, so as you’re constantly on
edge, thinking about “I don’t like this place, and also, I
keep getting pinched in the asshole.”
For reasons of journalistic ethics, I don’t wanna yack on
about the ending, suffice to say it manages to make a few
pretty exhausted clichés seem rather fresh. It’s like if
someone was just a couple meters from the end of a race, and
they fall over, but then someone runs up and kicks them so
hard in the arse that they fly over the finish line even when
everybody, including the runner in question, figured they were
about to die in a puddle of their own Lucozade-scented puke.
Also, despite the confusion that sets in here and there, you
never get the feeling that Jee-Won’s just messing with you
since it’s cool nowadays to fuck with the narrative. It’s not
like he’s flinging twists and turns into the mix to hide the
fact that there’s not much of the “substance”. And even
though, at the end, it’s still pretty unresolved, you watch a
few times and holy shit, man, I see what the hell’s going on
here. Some bits seem so simple you don’t bother thinking about
them, presuming them to be cut-and-dried and so on, whatever a
writerly term might be for “sorted”. Think again, though, have
another viewing, and maybe all those tied up bits start
getting a bit unravelled. It’s a hell of a lot of fun, is the
truth of the matter.
What this boils down to, is that this shit is some unique and
special shit, as opposed to regular old shit you can see any
place. At times it’s like a Burton-esque mesh of The Haunting
and Spirit Of The Beehive, except instead of a young lass
obsessed with James Whale’s Frankenstein and annoying the hell
out of her sister, it’s a young lass obsessed with something
or other that may or may not have to do with that closet that
everyone’s so worried about. Also, she doesn’t annoy her
sister, preferring to cuddle her, comfort her and so on. Much
nicer breed of sister, all being told.
Jee-Won wants to yack at great length in interviews and such
about how this is all about Traditional Family Values, and how
the house has become something to be feared, as opposed to a
place of comfort. There’s some mileage in those rantings, but,
like Takashi Miike’s Visitor Q, he creates something haunting
and beautiful where other folks might just have dashed
together some half-arsed reactionary toss. The Miike thing is
interesting, actually, since Jee-Won’s debut, The Quiet
Family, was later remade by the demented skinhead as The
Happiness Of The Katakuris, although he did add some extra
zombies and claymation.
A Tale Of Two Sisters is one of those flicks you immediately
wanna show to everybody you’ve ever known, just so as you can
debate and discuss and ponder about what the hell might just
have unfurled. It’s slightly frustrating, writing this whole
review thing, since what I wanna do is rhyme off all my kooky
theories about what the fuck was the point, anyhow? It’s like
Donnie Darko in that regard, something that draws you a little
bit closer with every viewing.
It’s better than Darko, though, as far as what The Duke would
think, since nobody in Tale Of Two Sisters ran off with
Kirsten Dunst the second The Duke’s motherfucking back was
turned.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line
an evening with. The Staple Sisters, perhaps, or maybe even
The Sisters Of Mercy, although you’d hope they wouldn’t open
their damn mouths the whole time they were with you, lest they
blight your ears with god-awful synth-goth bollocks. A buncha
nuns, also, would be welcome in Mondo Towers any day of the
week, especially those fucked-up ones from The Devils.
“Get down off the damn telly, would you ever? What the hell
are you doing with that religious icon, anyhow? God almighty,
various nuns, you folks are whacked to the teeth, is the truth
of the matter.”
The two sisters who serve as the main protagonists, and also
the title, of Kim Jee-Won’s masterpiece A Tale Of Two Sisters,
though… I don’t think I’d be too keen on having them around
for, say, a dinner party or an orgy or whatever might be on
that particular evening.
It’s not really their fault, however, the fact that a fella
mightn’t wish to be in their company for too long. Some fucked
up incident of some sort has obviously occurred, something
deranged and demented, and whatever it was, it’s probably got
something to do with that step-mother they so dislike, and
probably also something involving the freaky woman who comes
into their bedroom at all hours, or maybe hides below the
kitchen sink.
A Tale Of Two Sisters isn’t all that comfortable with dishing
out a plot point or two. Where some folks might want to have
lines like “Oh, here comes father”, or “Look! It’s the step-
mother we don’t like one damn bit”, Kim Jee-Won would rather
you sorted that kinda shit out in your own time. He ain’t got
a frame’s worth of room for that kinda expository nonsense,
not when there’s lingering shots of folks sitting by a pool to
get on with, or maybe somebody on a swing.
This utter refusal to whore out the narrative to any old
motherfucker is actually something of a treat, let it be
stated for the vinyl. You can’t take a damn thing for granted
in A Tale Of Two Sisters. What you thought you knew about
relationships between the four principal characters, and also
the two folks who show up at one point so as the lady can have
a nasty episode of some sort and puke all over the floor, you
find it all to be open to interpretation. Is she married to
him, you’re thinking? What are about those two, who the hell
are they? Why’s everyone so pissed off at her? Why does she so
dislike the other one?
That kinda nonsense rattles about in the skull until well
after the credits, and then you watch it again a couple times
on account of not only do you wanna figure this stuff out, but
also, the flick is a motherfucking masterpiece.
What you can go ahead and get on with, if you feel like it of
an afternoon, is adding A Tale Of Two Sisters to that rather
short list of Fairy Tale Horror Movies, the likes of The
Company Of Wolves or Bride Of Frankenstein or Willard, horror
flicks that are just as enchanting and just as subversive as
those tales about somebody or other gets thrown out their home
and ends up in some forest mincing around with all sorts of
otherworldly beasts.
There was that other one, too, Snow White – A Tale Of Terror,
which snubbed the singing dwarves and talking deer of the
Disney version for a much more Sigourney Weaver-based
approach. It was alright.
To this end, in A Tale Of Two Sisters, we get the events
taking place in a gorgeous, gothic mini-mansion, the kinda
place where television sets and phones and shit like that seem
like horrific intrusions, digital remnants of the nowadays,
amidst all the otherworldly tranquillity.
The flick is actually based on a Korean folk tale, Janghwa And
Hongryun, so this all makes sense. In case you didn’t know,
folk tales differ from fairy tales in that fairy tales are
stuff you read to your children, possibly involving giants,
and a folk tale is something anthropological types like to
study and maybe write a thesis on somewhere along the line.
They include giants and shit also, but usually the giant is
really a penis, or maybe “Mother”.
I haven’t read the source tale, so I don’t know how faithful
this all is. I doubt there was a psychiatric hospital in the
original, to be honest. In those days you probably just tied
someone to the farthest tree in the forest, and hoped they
sobered up at some point, or maybe you burned them in the
village square. If they happened to be hilarious types, like
Jim Carrey in Me, Myself And Irene, then probably you would
leave them in a tavern, so as they could entertain drinkers
with all sorts of goofy bullshit.
A Tale Of Two Sisters is being marketed as a horror flick, and
it is, but it’s more of the growing-unease type deal than,
say, the shit yourself rotten type epitomised by the Ju-On
series. There’s a bit with a freaky, jerky-limb woman as per
usual, but it’s pretty brief. This is more like The Others, in
that it just wants to fling you into a Bad Motherfucking Place
and then pinch you every so often, so as you’re constantly on
edge, thinking about “I don’t like this place, and also, I
keep getting pinched in the asshole.”
For reasons of journalistic ethics, I don’t wanna yack on
about the ending, suffice to say it manages to make a few
pretty exhausted clichés seem rather fresh. It’s like if
someone was just a couple meters from the end of a race, and
they fall over, but then someone runs up and kicks them so
hard in the arse that they fly over the finish line even when
everybody, including the runner in question, figured they were
about to die in a puddle of their own Lucozade-scented puke.
Also, despite the confusion that sets in here and there, you
never get the feeling that Jee-Won’s just messing with you
since it’s cool nowadays to fuck with the narrative. It’s not
like he’s flinging twists and turns into the mix to hide the
fact that there’s not much of the “substance”. And even
though, at the end, it’s still pretty unresolved, you watch a
few times and holy shit, man, I see what the hell’s going on
here. Some bits seem so simple you don’t bother thinking about
them, presuming them to be cut-and-dried and so on, whatever a
writerly term might be for “sorted”. Think again, though, have
another viewing, and maybe all those tied up bits start
getting a bit unravelled. It’s a hell of a lot of fun, is the
truth of the matter.
What this boils down to, is that this shit is some unique and
special shit, as opposed to regular old shit you can see any
place. At times it’s like a Burton-esque mesh of The Haunting
and Spirit Of The Beehive, except instead of a young lass
obsessed with James Whale’s Frankenstein and annoying the hell
out of her sister, it’s a young lass obsessed with something
or other that may or may not have to do with that closet that
everyone’s so worried about. Also, she doesn’t annoy her
sister, preferring to cuddle her, comfort her and so on. Much
nicer breed of sister, all being told.
Jee-Won wants to yack at great length in interviews and such
about how this is all about Traditional Family Values, and how
the house has become something to be feared, as opposed to a
place of comfort. There’s some mileage in those rantings, but,
like Takashi Miike’s Visitor Q, he creates something haunting
and beautiful where other folks might just have dashed
together some half-arsed reactionary toss. The Miike thing is
interesting, actually, since Jee-Won’s debut, The Quiet
Family, was later remade by the demented skinhead as The
Happiness Of The Katakuris, although he did add some extra
zombies and claymation.
A Tale Of Two Sisters is one of those flicks you immediately
wanna show to everybody you’ve ever known, just so as you can
debate and discuss and ponder about what the hell might just
have unfurled. It’s slightly frustrating, writing this whole
review thing, since what I wanna do is rhyme off all my kooky
theories about what the fuck was the point, anyhow? It’s like
Donnie Darko in that regard, something that draws you a little
bit closer with every viewing.
It’s better than Darko, though, as far as what The Duke would
think, since nobody in Tale Of Two Sisters ran off with
Kirsten Dunst the second The Duke’s motherfucking back was
turned.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line
