A Tale of Two Sisters (aka Janghwa, Hongryeon) + The Uninvited

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
8.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
9/10

Year made: 2003
Runtime: 115 minutes
IMDB page: here
Rewatch value: through the roof



Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
4.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
4.5/10

Year made: 2009
Runtime: 87 minutes
IMDB page: here


American remakes. Can't live with them... can't live with them. They drive me slightly nuts. I understand that they introduce American audiences to the original film, and may very well actually do a lot to generate publicity for the original film. But they RUIN a lot of things.

I will talk about The Uninvited first because A Tale of Two Sisters has so much more insight and intrigue to offer, as you can see from the very high ratings I give it.

The two only have a similar basic premise. They take the premise to completely different places. So if you have watched one, do not overly worry about spoiling the ending of the other one.

Still, I was quite upset after I watched The Uninvited when I learned it was a re-make of a classic I haven't seen (my oversight, I know). It still takes quite a bit from the original. So, definitely watch the original first and... skip The Uninvited if you don't have the time.

Okay, basic Cinderella premise. A teenage girl (we'll call her A) gets picked up by her father from the mental hospital after suffering a break-down after her mother's death. She re-unites with sister B at the creepy isolated lake house the family owns. She also meets someone she doesn't want to see: her stepmother, who was her mother's live-in nurse when her mother was sick. A and B don't get along with the stepmother at all, who seems evil and contriving. The father seems strangely distant and impartial in the conflict. There seems to be some sort of vengeful female spirit haunting the place, which seems to indicate foul play in the mother's death.

I have to give some credit to the American remake because the writers worked hard to make the story quite different (albeit a lot less fascinating and ... downright boring and cliched sometimes) from the original. (I always develop sympathy for the filmmakers after I watch the special features...) Loose ends tie up a lot more neatly, with a lot less room for speculation and ambiguity and interpretation. That is as well, because that is the style of Western movie-making. According to the "making of" featurette, anyway. I rather think a lot of Western horror movies don't make sense at all. Loose ends are flapping in the open in the end and are never mentioned again.

The Uninvited at least doesn't have that problem. Things are properly eerie and ... predictable. I think that's what's bothering me about it. And it's not ... that hard to get. It's not intelligent enough. It's not dumb, but it's not that brainy and complicated either. I'm not too in love with the Sister A actress, Emily Browning, who was Violet in A Series of Unfortunate Events. I liked the more free, more daring Sister B a lot better. A was just too bland. And annoyingly weak. Just gives off this whiny vibe. At the end you sort of get it and she's redeemed a bit (she does have a reason, after all), and I suppose she's not a bad actress at all (vulnerable, forgetful, traumatized properly).

On to A Tale of Two Sisters. The original Korean name is 장화, 홍련 (Janghwa, Hongryeon), which means Rose Flower, Red Lotus, which were the names of the two sisters in an old Korean folktale. The film is a variation of this folktale about two sisters and their evil stepmother and their distant father and what the stepmother did to ruin the sisters' lives.

In this movie, the sisters are actually named Su-mi and Su-yeong. Su-mi is the one committed in the mental hospital. Su-yeong is really timid, and their beautiful young stepmother seems to be mistreating her. Su-mi tries to stand up for her sister, most of the time to no avail.

The Korean version is so much more complicated and ambiguous. There are points in the film that you think are totally irrelevant (random shots of things that don't seem to make sense or don't relate to the plot), but these tangents are precisely what make this film so great-- they all make sense when you view them in the right light (which is the light of hindsight). And depending on how you piece together these bits, you can get different conclusions about what really happened, what was real, what was not-so-real. You can pick what you want to believe in, but keep in mind that the strongest conclusion is the one that takes into account all the different pieces.

Oh, not everything will make sense at the end of the first viewing. In fact, I was so puzzled at the end of my first viewing that I looked it up on the web. I was sure that someone would get crazily hooked on this film and try to explain every single detail and inform everyone what exactly went down in the film. I was right.

This link is ONLY to be used AFTER you have seen the film. This is way too great a film to waste by spoilers, and you probably won't understand or care about half the things mentioned in there until you have seen the film. User Opiemar on IMDb has really gone to great length to explain everything after many many viewings, and his/her explanation makes great sense with the support of evidence he's unearthed from the film.

The acting, it's heart-breaking. The two sisters' love is so tender and fragile (they love each other greatly, but there's often very little they can do to defend each other). The stepmother's desperation, her smiles and immediate narrowing of the eyes toward the girls as soon as the father's not looking. The father's impassive, tired stare, to both his daughters and to his new wife/girlfriend (whom you would think he's crazy about),

Visually, the colours are dazzling, in a very dark, gloomy way. Asian directors often use a wild colour pallet for visual effects; Ji-woon Kim (the writer and director, definitely thumbs-up) exhibits a mastery over colours matching the mood and themes of the movie as it goes along. The dizzying myriad of wallpapers, the old wooden colours of the house itself, the vibrant colours of the girls' and the stepmother's dresses and shirts.

AND the soundtrack. Absolutely haunting. Deeply melancholy, emotionally damaged, vulnerable, with a slight tinge of insanity that may go deeper than it appears, just like the film itself. The theme song, Crying Moon, is featured on the right side. If you are reading this a long time after June 16, 2009, then you can find Crying Moon in the Global Music Tour section on the right.