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?
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