Film Review--Janghwa, Hongryeon (A Tale of Two Sisters)

Janghwa, Hongryeon (A Tale of Two Sisters)
written and directed by Ji-woon Kim
starring Kap-su Kim, Jung-ah Yum, Su-jeong Lim, Geun-yeong Mun,

This film poses too many questions that can never be answered. It’s a film that is never what it seems and often feels to convoluted for its own good. It doesn’t make strict sense unless one looks at it through the prism of dreams and fantasies. In the end it’s ultimately confusing which isn’t such a bad thing. It’s very ambiguity is its central strength even if there is nothing particularly solid to grasp hold of. Still, the characters are richly drawn and the acting is impeccable. It’s a gorgeously shot film and every movement is meticulously performed with great precision and care.

The story begins with a girl named Soo-mi (Su-jeong) who is residing in a mental institution. A doctor is interviewing her and attempts to get information out of her about what happened on a specific day. The scene shifts and the girl and her sister Soo-yeon (Geun-yeong) have arrived back home with their father Moo-hyeon (Kap-su) and his new wife Eun-joo (Jung-ah). The film focuses mainly on the relationship between Eun-joo and the girls. There is tremendous attention and soon very strange things begin to occur in the house which Eun-joo attributes to the girls. For starters there is a strange creature, seemingly female, who lives under the sink and haunts Soo-yeon’s dreams. This being is never emphatically explained and the audience is left to wonder about its origins and meaning vis-a-vis the other characters in the film. It is an exceedingly creepy creature who radiates a definite malevolence that the film exploits quite expertly.

The film builds up tension by concentrating on the simple mannerisms and behaviors that make up any particular day. Early on as the girls get settled the film is a reflection of the often too quiet daily routine. This quickly shifts as seeming inexplicable events begin to seep through the immaculately constructed edifice and begin to haunt the central characters. Soo-yeon is troubled in her dreams and is accosted by a form that appears in her room. She is terrified and remains so for much of the film. She is jostled about and cannot quite manage to extricate herself from the tyranny that routinely accosts her.

The animosity between Eun-joo and the girls is readily apparent from the onset. They still cling to memories of their dead mother and refuse to allow her into their lives in any manner whatsoever. This proves to be a harrowing arrangement as Eun-joo begins a course of torment that is directed at Eun-joo including locking her in the wardrobe. We are led to believe that Eun-joo ultimately murders Soo-yeon as she drags a large sack that leaves a slick track of blood in its wake. Soo-mi, becoming progressively more hysterical, believes it is the body of her dead sister and struggles to open the sack with a grim determination.

At one point in the story Moo-hyeon tells Soo-mi that her sister is dead and this revelation utterly dislodges the narrative and forces the audience to question everything that has come before it. It leads to a series of flashbacks that attempt to shed light on events but they only prove to confuse matters further. Nothing is particularly clear by the end as one is unable to fully extract fantasy from reality let alone deduce any meaning from the narrative. Still, there is an elegance that is maintained throughout the film despite the lack of full coherency. It’s a film that does not attempt to solve its core dilemma and the result is a series of agonizing questions that are never answered.

Once the story shifts and fantasies effectively take over the narrative, great confusions abound which only add to the puzzling nature of the story. Are we supposed to take what we are seeing as real or are they delusions harbored by one of the characters? Is anything in the film actually happening? It becomes difficult to fully grasp the import of any of the scenes in the second half of the film because they are quite incredible yet possible in the overall lexicon the film is projecting. The end result is a film that possesses the capacity for a multitude of meanings any of which are plausible but hardly clear.

The film’s great implausibility is central to its effectiveness. Like all horror films there is a basic conceit upon which everything else is built upon. There is a final point of view and it attempts to explain the terror and difficulties that have developed over the course of the film. It’s a strange and almost mystical take on events but comes off as legitimate and vital.

The film completely guts everything we witness with a very sharp blade that leaves us reeling in the end. Essentially the entire film is reconstructed from an entirely different point of view from the one we become familiar with throughout most of the film. Indeed, everything must be figured anew and one must scramble to make any effort to “solve” the great dilemmas the film poses as it pushes on.

Overall, this is complexly constructed story that seems mostly to be about the psychological impact of greatly traumatic events on the minds of the vulnerable and impressionable. It leaves itself open to numerous interpretations which provide it with an urgency that is readily made manifest. The characters are exquisitely drawn and fully believable within a story that is constructed out of dreams and phantoms. It insists on a certain acceptance of at least one reality but even this is undermined by later events that offer no legitimate ground to stand upon.