[An_Empty_Memory]

My Dear Sister film

[An_Empty_Memory]

Meh, I dunno how to edit my post.

The correct name for the film is Sister My Sister.

[bando21]

[Sharon]

That's crazy how the eyes were found in the scarf around the neck.

[deanmine]

i know nothing about any of this

[Bundy12]

Damn!

[deanmine]

The bizarre crime occurred more than 60 years ago, but they're still pondering it today, trying to figure out what really happened that late afternoon in 1933 and why the final act of vengeance was so vicious and brutal.

It began in a quiet French village, where two sisters, Christine and Lea Papin, were employed as housekeepers for the petty and tyrannical Madame Danzard.

The sisters didn't mind their servitude, however, since their lonely and uneventful lives up to that point had been dictated by an overbearing mother and, later, a collection of suffocating nuns. So they did their menial jobs, suffered the daily abuse and saved their meager earnings in hopes of someday finding a place of their own.

But somewhere along the line, their simple plan went astray. Christine and Lea--who had no friends except each other and slept in the same bed in their tiny attic room--began to experience rather unsisterly feelings toward each other. The moment they acted on these feelings, their structured lives began to spin wildly out of control, and when the extremely proper Madame Danzard got wind of what was going on up in the attic, well. . . .

Lovers of plays, and especially French theater, may recognize this steamy tale of incest and murder as the celebrated playwright Jean Genet's 1947 "The Maids." Genet took a far greater psychosexual, not to mention existential, approach to the relationship, which was later adapted into an uninspiring 1975 film starring Glenda Jackson and Susannah York.

"Sister My Sister"--which is scripted by Wendy Kesselman, based on her stage play, and directed by renowned theater director Nancy Meckler--suggests that the sheer isolation and loneliness of the sisters' lives led to their intense relationship, and when that newfound intimacy was threatened by outsiders, they had no recourse but to butcher their evil employer and cut her eyes out, along with the eyes of her chubby, almost-as-evil daughter.

"Sister" comes no closer to exposing the truth behind the horrifying act than "The Maids" did, but like Genet, Kesselman has created a couple of meaty acting roles in the form of these sisters of no mercy.

As Charlotte, the older and sicker sister who always resented the fact that her mother sent her away, Joely Richardson (Vanessa Redgrave's younger daughter) brings a disquieting intensity to the role that grows more malignant as the story unfolds. Even better is young Jodhi May as Lea, the wide-eyed not-so-innocent whose confusion as family matters begin to get out of hand is both terrifying and tragic.

Unfortunately, the parts of Madame Danzard and her daughter, Isabelle, are not nearly as well-crafted, as Kesselman turns them into cardboard stereotypes one might find in a Monty Python skit. Julie Walters does a good job of finding the comic pomposity in Madame Danzard, but when she grows peevish and cruel, it feels more like a silly parlor game than a malicious attack.

Director Meckler keeps us involved, however, by inviting us to share the forbidden privacy of the relationship. The sex scenes are both erotic and revealing.

"Sister My Sister" loses its way in the murky darkness of its tone now and then, but thanks to the combined talents of its female-driven production team, it carries us along to the final unforgettable shot, made all the more chilling by the discovery that it is based on fact.

[Pelle]

Whaa, interesting story!
Have to check this movie out

[Darkest Angel]

Wonder if its on Netflix? I saw a re-enactment of this story on ID but it was a shortened & much sterilized version. Thanks for this

[Pelle]

Originally Posted by Darkest Angel ↗

Wonder if its on Netflix? I saw a re-enactment of this story on ID but it was a shortened & much sterilized version. Thanks for this

Netflix usually sucks moviewise.
Thank god for torrents