A Tale Of Two Sisters

Bluesky

Asian ghost stories are quite the rage, which is another way of saying that Hollywood can't do them any more, because CGI is too much of a temptation. What about Mexico and South America? They understand magic realism, it's true, and some of their directors have bizarre imaginations, but what the Japanese - and now a South Korean - are so clever at is reflecting the cracked mirror of the subconscious.

What is real and what is not real is the question. Does the past climb into a pouch under the skin of your heartbone and slowly gnaw its way through soft tissue until the pain of remembrance drives you mad.

Writer/director Kim ji-woon tells the story of two sisters, a dead mother, a weak father and a manipulative step-mother by restricting the radius of activity to a big house in the country and filming mostly at night. Also, time is distorted so that past and present merge into a single experience, as if the dead walk with us, and family secrets are protected by a veil of silence.

The sisters are at an age when likes and dislikes are so clear and ambiguity is mocked as gutless. Sy-yeon (Mun geun-yeong) is the quiet, thoughtful one. Su-mi (Lim su-jeong) hates everything - the house, being there, Father's inability to respond emotionally, her step-mother's power surges.

So much is hinted at, whispered under the breath. Truth seeps through sodden layers of blood-soaked memory, imitated in dreams, so that nothing can be entirely trusted. Su-mi's mental state might be described as hysterical. Her step-mother's is more calculating, although equally disturbed.

For all its tricksy plot devises, this is a superior psychological thriller, beautifully handled by the actors, especially Lim su-jeong, who conveys fear with an almost unbearable tension.