A Tale of Two Sisters

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Movie
German title A Tale of Two Sisters
Two Sisters (TV title)
Original title Janghwa, Hongryeon ( 장화, 홍련 )
Country of production South Korea
original language Korean
Publishing year 2003
length 110 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Kim Jee-woon
script Kim Jee-woon
production Oh Ki-min
Oh Jeong-wan
music Lee Byung-woo
camera Lee Mo-gae
cut Go Im-pyo
occupation
synchronization

A Tale of Two Sisters (Original title: Janghwa, Hongryeon ) is a 2003 South Korean psycho- horror film directed by Kim Jee-woon . According to film critics, it is one of the best South Korean horror films and the first to be shown in US theaters. DreamWorks brought the American remake The Uninvited (German title: The Curse of the 2 Sisters ) to the cinema in 2009 .

The title of the film comes from the well-known Korean folk tale Janghwa Hongnyeon jeon ( 장화 홍련 전 ), which originated in the Joseon Dynasty and is about two sisters named Janghwa and Hongryeon and their cruel stepmother. It has already been filmed several times, but this film has only taken over the basic situation.

action

The two sisters Su-mi and Su-yeon come back home after a long stay in psychiatry. Once there, they are received by the stepmother Eun-ju, who initially behaves friendly but strict. The stepmother's younger and more fearful sister Su-yeon is particularly fearful, while Su-mi is coldly contemptuous of her. Strange things are going on in the house. Steps can be heard at night and someone comes into Su-yeon's room. The stepmother also feels threatened by these processes. Only the father does not seem to notice anything about this or the conflict between the sisters and the stepmother. Something seems to have happened in the past that nobody wants to talk about, but it is a burden for everyone involved.

Eun-ju has invited her brother and his wife to dinner, but the sisters refuse to attend. During the meal, the stepmother tells a story with great amusement, in which her brother also appears, but only triggers an embarrassed silence. It turns out that the story is apparently fictitious, to which the stepmother reacts with hostility. Before the situation escalates, however, the sister-in-law suddenly has a seizure in which she rolls on the floor with severe convulsions and vomits. After recovering from medication, she tells her husband on the way back that she saw a girl under the kitchen sink. The girl also appears to the stepmother when she is alone in the kitchen.

The conflict between the stepmother and the sisters worsens dramatically when the stepmother's dwarf parrots are found dead. She finds one of the birds in Su-yeon's bed, whereupon she locks it in the closet in an outbreak of violence. Su-mi had previously asked the father to remove the cupboard from the room, whereupon he only replies: "Su-mi, we had agreed not to talk about the wardrobe." After he had buried the birds, asked he talks about Su-mi, who has just freed her little sister, who is completely dissolved, from the closet. She has been acting very strangely since she was back and doing bad things. In return, Su-mi accuses him of not having noticed the meanness of the stepmother that she, and especially Su-yeon, would do to her. The father explains to her, dismayed by this reaction, that Su-yeon, who is still standing next to her sister in the film, is dead.

The next morning the father spontaneously drove to the next town. Su-mi discovers that Su-yeon's room is boarded up. As she walks through the house, she discovers a wide trail of blood on the floor. In the meantime you can see the stepmother pulling a big, bloody sack through the house and hitting it with a stick. Su-mi follows the trail and finally finds the sack lying on the floor. She suspects Su-yeon is in it and tries unsuccessfully to open the knot that closes the sack. However, after she got herself a pair of scissors just a few steps away, the sack is gone. The trail continues into an adjoining room, in which the cupboard from Su-yeon's room suddenly appears, in which the sack is now. When she tries to cut it open, however, she is attacked by the stepmother. In the following fight, Su-mi falls with his head on the edge of the table and loses consciousness.

When she comes to, her stepmother is dragging her around the house. When Eun-ju notices that the girl has regained consciousness, she gives her a short, but initially not very illuminating, monologue. She tells Su-mi that she had already announced to her once that she would regret something. Su-mi wanted to forget that, but she couldn't, because it would haunt her like a ghost. Then Eun-ju tries to kill Su-mi with a clay figure, but is surprised by the father's return home and misses Su-mi.

This is how the father finds her. When he has put her on a sofa, Eun-ju enters the room, which looks completely different. It turns out that, apart from visiting his uncle and aunt, Su-mi was alone in the house with his father the whole time. She imagined both the stepmother and the sister who actually died and assumed their roles. Su-mi is brought back to the clinic, whereupon her stepmother, now alone in the house, is haunted by the ghost. However, the viewer's fate remains uncertain.

In a flashback, the events of that day are finally described, which was the trigger for Su-mi's current condition: The father arrives at the family house with Eun-ju while their brother is visiting. The real mother of the two girls can also be seen briefly. The mood is visibly tense when Su-mi leaves the table angrily and Eun-ju Su-yeon snatches the cutlery. The girl also runs upstairs and cries on her mother's bed. When she wakes up, she discovers the hanged mother's body in the closet and tries to free her from it when the closet falls on her.

Although everyone present heard the noise, no one comes to the rescue. The stepmother alone looks and turns away in shock at the sight of the buried girl, before, after a moment's hesitation, decides to help and tell Su-mi about it, who has just come out of her room. But Su-mi insults her stepmother, whereupon, instead of letting Su-mi in, she admonishes the girl that she will regret her decision. Su-yeon dies under the weight of the closet while Su-mi leaves the house and goes out through the garden gate.

Analysis and interpretation

Daniel Martin contributed to A Tale of Two Sisters in Sangjoon Lee's Rediscovering Korean Cinema from 2019 . According to him, the final moments of the film reflect a painful, tragic irony. A look back shows how Su-mi leaves the house towards the lake on a clear day, unsuspecting that her sister is taking her last breath and her mother is already dead. According to Martin, this is symbolic of the fact that the disintegration of the family is an almost invisible process and that things are not as they appear. With Su-mi as an unreliable narrator due to her diverse personalities, the film combines horror with melodrama and appeals to both local and global viewers.

Family melodrama

A central theme in the South Korean horror film is family. A Tale of Two Sisters initially seems to focus primarily on family dynamics. The stepmother Eun-ju wants to be perceived as the matriarch of the family and longs for peace and stability. Su-mi's rebellious loyalty to her mother and her uncontrollable hostility to her father and stepmother are deliberately self-destructive. The fight between the two for the family determines the story. The film is thematically in line with earlier horror films such as The Housemaid , which is a warning to save the family well-being. But the surprising twist of the film shows that the family bond in A Tale of Two Sisters has already been destroyed. Su-mi's mother and sister are dead, her father is emotionally absent and his new wife does not dare to visit the family home. The end shows that Su-mi's psyche is already badly damaged. While earlier horror films leave hope at the end, A Tale of Two Sisters ends full of hopelessness.

Directly connected with the end is another essential aspect of the film: the grief. South Korean horror films evoke sadness as well as shivers. The reason for this is that South Korea's narrative has its origins in the Sinpa genre. This form can be found almost exclusively in Korea and is often simply translated as melodrama in Western literature . Sinpa shows very sentimental, tragic love story full of emotion, pathos and suffering. The "sad ending" is an integral part of the genre. By withholding important information, A Tale of Two Sisters was able to evoke both sadness and fear. While it becomes clear in the course of the film that Su-mi only imagined her sister Su-yeon and her stepmother and even slipped into the role of the mother-in-law, the ending shows the origin of Su-mi's trauma. She blames herself for Su-yeon's death for unwittingly having had the opportunity to save Su-yeon.

Morality, guilt and the mind

According to Martin, South Korean horror films clearly differ from Hollywood films in dealing with morality and justice. American horror films typically focused on innocent victims and malicious killers. The viewer is encouraged to sympathize with certain characters, some of whom are gradually killed by a murderer in the film, until ultimately a few good protagonists triumph over evil. In South Korean horror films, the victims are usually not innocent. So it is often about revenge and justice. A Tale of Two Sisters uses a culture-specific ghost, called Wonhon ( 원혼 ). Typically this legendary figure is the ghost of a young woman who has been brutally murdered and who haunts the world of the living for revenge. Usually the death circumstance includes family betrayal or sexual assault. As a result, Wonhon usually arouses more sympathy than the victims of the spirit.

While the greatest danger in the film comes from Su-mi's own imagination, the story also suggests that the house is haunted by a ghost. Several times Su-mi (and Su-mi in their imagination as Eun-ju) is confronted with a ghost, according to Daniel Martin the ghost of their mother. The mind creates tension and fear, but does not create direct suffering and unhappiness. The existence of Wonhon is confirmed by the wife of Eun-ju's brother when these two are guests. A look back reveals that Su-mi's mother took her own life. She suffered from an illness and was getting weaker and weaker. In doing so, she had to watch a relationship develop between her husband and the nurse Eun-ju. She hangs herself in a closet. When Su-yeon opens it, the cupboard falls on her and she dies too. Eun-ju noticed this, but did nothing. Su-yeon has heard something too, but is too busy to look.

The main theme of the film is guilt. With Eun-ju, Su-mi creates a person in her mind whom she hates as a result of her own guilt. The Eun-ju introduced by Su-mi is malicious and violent towards Su-yeon, who Su-mi tries to protect. According to Martin, Su-mi blames Eun-ju outwardly for everything, but inwardly she blames herself. One could assume that the spirit would haunt Mu-hyeon, but the latter must already watch Su-mis's mental state powerlessly increasingly deteriorated. So his torture is to see the result of his affair. Su-mi doesn't get any justice, although Martin says her suffering is mostly undeserved.

Restrained horror

The way A Tale of Two Sisters creates horror and fear is restrained in nature. It is a psychological horror film. The film builds tension through hints of the viewer's imagination. There is hardly any violence and no gore in the film . The film thus shows similarities to the Japanese film Ring and the Hong Kong-Singaporean co-production The Eye . The film is also reminiscent of The Others by Alejandro Amenábar . The house makes an important contribution to the international popularity of the film and its narrative. This house looks like a Japanese property with western interiors.

Trivia

  • In the making of , the director explained that the original version of the film provided a kind of irony because Su-mi, who suspected that the stepmother had killed her real mother by poison, mixed the same poison into the mother's medication that im In the end, however, were her own as she also played the mother when she took the pills. So she took care of her disturbed mental state herself.
  • Since Su-mi slipped completely into the role of the mother, she did not hesitate to see her father as a husband and therefore slept with him in a common bed. Many viewers saw this as an indication of a possible sexual relationship between the father and his daughter. However, since this was not the case, the corresponding scene was cut out.
  • A scene was also planned in which, after the father told Su-mi that Su-yeon was dead, events occurred in the room that are reminiscent of a poltergeist. (A door slammed and a fan moved even though it was not plugged in). However, this was too "supernatural" for the director and therefore it was also cut out. The basic idea of ​​the scene that Su-yeon was still in the house as a ghost is carried on throughout the film.
  • The film was originally shown at festivals in Germany in the original language with subtitles. In 2008 the film was broadcast on Arte as "Zwei Schwestern" in a German dubbed version.

reception

A Tale of Two Sisters is considered a milestone in South Korean cinema . In addition to the Whispering Corridors series, the film made a significant contribution to the fact that discussions about South Korean film in the West are often determined by the horror genre. After film professor Daniel Martin, the film is possibly the most accomplished and shocking horror film of its time. A Tale of Two Sisters offers a mixture of shivers, narrative ambiguity, psychological tension and jumpscares with destructive forces of both human and ghostly nature.

Awards

At the 2004 Fantasporto film festival , the film received the grand prize for best film. In addition, Kim Jee-woon was honored as the best director and received the special prize of the jury in the Orient Express section. Lim Su-jeong received the award for best actress. At the Pusan International Film Festival in 2003 was awarded the Su-jeong with the New Currents Award as best new actress, as well at the Blue Dragon Film Awards 2003 in the same category. At the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival 2004, Yeom Jeong-a received the Silver Raven for her performance.

At the Sitges Festival Internacional de Cinema de Catalunya 2003 the film was nominated for best film. Yeom Jeong-a was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category of the Chlotrudis Awards 2006.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for A Tale of Two Sisters . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , August 2005 (PDF; test number: 103 526 DVD).
  2. ^ Daniel Martin: A Tale of Two Sisters (2003). Sadness and Suffering in South Korean Horror . In: Sangjoon Lee (Ed.): Rediscovering Korean Cinema . University of Michigan Press, Michigan 2019, ISBN 978-0-472-05429-9 , pp. 406 , doi : 10.3998 / mpub.10027126 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Daniel Martin: A Tale of Two Sisters (2003). Sadness and Suffering in South Korean Horror . In: Sangjoon Lee (Ed.): Rediscovering Korean Cinema . University of Michigan Press, Michigan 2019, ISBN 978-0-472-05429-9 , pp. 400 f ., doi : 10.3998 / mpub.10027126 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Daniel Martin: A Tale of Two Sisters (2003). Sadness and Suffering in South Korean Horror . In: Sangjoon Lee (Ed.): Rediscovering Korean Cinema . University of Michigan Press, Michigan 2019, ISBN 978-0-472-05429-9 , pp. 401-403 , doi : 10.3998 / mpub.10027126 .
  5. ^ Daniel Martin: A Tale of Two Sisters (2003). Sadness and Suffering in South Korean Horror . In: Sangjoon Lee (Ed.): Rediscovering Korean Cinema . University of Michigan Press, Michigan 2019, ISBN 978-0-472-05429-9 , pp. 405 f ., doi : 10.3998 / mpub.10027126 .
  6. ^ A b c Daniel Martin: A Tale of Two Sisters (2003). Sadness and Suffering in South Korean Horror . In: Sangjoon Lee (Ed.): Rediscovering Korean Cinema . University of Michigan Press, Michigan 2019, ISBN 978-0-472-05429-9 , pp. 395 , doi : 10.3998 / mpub.10027126 .