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Rating:
(Contains spoilers)
Two Sisters is a slow film. The Western viewer, now accustomed to the Hollywood economy imperative, which calls for the necessary removal of any element that does not functionally contribute to the unfolding of the narrative, might find it boring. Yet, someone could argue that dead times and silences also nurture poetry. Oriental cinema, even on the entertainment side, always seems well aware of this (the most extreme and significant example of this slow-poetic combination is undoubtedly the cinema of Weerasethakul) and this Two Sisters, released in 2003 under the direction of Kim Ji-woon, is no exception.
With the rhythms of a hypnotic and disturbing nursery rhyme, punctuated by the rhythmic repetition of refrains and internal rhymes, yet with a broken and limping meter, the film unfolds in a Chinese box structure (pardon, Korean) full of twists, interpenetrations between temporal planes, bifurcations, and dead ends, barely hinted at allusions that prove to be crucial. All this twisting can indeed generate some confusion, especially since the final explanation, with all its twists and turns, is not immune to naivety.
However, the undeniable skill with which everything is handled in terms of the economy of parts and timings, with a truly meticulous writing finesse, all based on the implicit and implied, is undeniable. Similarly, despite the slowness lamented by many (but slowness does not mean dullness: how many hyperkinetic films lack rhythm!), it cannot be denied that the film knows how to maintain tension, creeping underneath even in the most relaxed moments, in a meticulously crafted crescendo. And this despite the film gradually sliding from atmospheric horror to psychological thriller, eventually leading inexorably to family melodrama (an often ineliminable end or component of Eastern cinema, from wuxiapian to Yimou to Wong's melancholies, from Chan-wook to Miike of Audition, which is, among other things, cited too explicitly here).
Those expecting boo scares from tacky puppets summoned from the underworld will be disappointed, as the few appearances (which seem included almost solely to fulfill the dictates of a genre, the horror one, to which ours can only be tangentially referred, with the result that the film could very well function even without them) are fortunately managed without ever showing too much, and the results are truly powerful: the kitchen scene is especially well-constructed, impossible not to feel a shiver down your spine.
But the main player here is the atmosphere; thus, we witness the hypnotic nocturnal dances of ethereal figures cloaked in a tendency towards sleepwalking, to squeaky doors opening onto labyrinthine corridors illuminated by dim lamps or the faint rays filtering through closed curtains, to the finely stitched interplay of light and shadow on the vibrant colors of the wallpapers, and everything feels immersed in this suspended, unreal, artificial and deeply dreamlike atmosphere, owing much to the lynchian lesson, both in the use of lighting previously mentioned and in the anxiety-inducing and disorienting distortion of sound, almost a spectral presence and breath itself.
All this helps give the impression of a stage setting of the subconscious, in which projections of psychological drives rather than flesh-and-blood characters move and act (just as, proportions notwithstanding, in Lynch), and this impression will indeed be confirmed when much of what happens reveals itself to be nothing more than the exteriorization of a troubled psyche. It will then become clear the symbolic significance embodied by the house, a diabolical devouring mechanism in which objects and people dissolve into nothingness and reappear unexpectedly, a sort of miniature Overlook Hotel that stacks and confuses memories and visions, perceptions, and desires, like within the folds of a bewildered mind.
To tell us this, Kim Ji-woon uses a composed, geometric direction that favors the complex framing construction (e.g., the stepmother's reflection before going to bed) and lyrical detail (examples abound), but also knows how to make judicious use of camera movements (the 360-degree rotation around Soo-mi and the stepmother with consequent recognition), demonstrating mastery of the medium and indeed justified stylistic ambitions.
Ultimately, Two Sisters moves between authorship and felt lyricism expressed in the magnificent "dead times" so hard to digest for those who only care to know how it ends, the entertainment needs dictated by the genre (fully met with great skill) and an underlying restless dreaminess that constitutes the main fascination of the film.
Surely, previous more or less similar works may come to mind (The Sixth Sense, Ringu and compatriots, especially The Others), but one will also realize that the use of material offered by tradition is anything but passive or detrimental, indeed that the film would not look out of place alongside the aforementioned. If one then adds the fact that everything is flawlessly packaged from a formal point of view and is indeed a delight for the eyes, despite certain contrivances and artificialities in unraveling the plot, one can only give a warm nod to this enchanting music box from afar.
7.5
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