“A Tale of Two Sisters”: When Guilt Breaks Our Psyche
This October, Citizen Jane is premiering a host of new content in a new series, This One's For the Ghouls: Women, the "Other" and Horror. Focusing exclusively on the horror genre, this month will contain spine-tingling essays and reviews discussing our Stephens students' favorite horror films. We'll dig deep (six feet deep, in fact) into the roles and portrayals of women in horror, as well as the abject -- the "other" -- and how those elements interact in some of the most well-known (and/or gruesomest) films in the canon. Check back here soon for more!
A Tale of Two Sisters broke me.
Directed by Kim Jee-Woon, this Korean horror film brings us home. A lakeside house decorated in floral- patterned walls, red stained carpets, cages of dead doves, and the scariest of all: an antiquated wardrobe.
The film's slow beginning places the audience in an unsettling state. We follow its main protagonists, Sumi (Im Soo-jung) and Suyeon (Moon Geun-young) as they navigate homelife upon Sumi’s return from a mental institute. Dealing with the grief of their dead mother, having a resentment toward their new stepmother Eunju and strange occurrences disturbing their sleep, the two sisters work to unveil the repressed past of the house. We spend most of the film from the perspective of Sumi as she tries to get reacquainted with the home and protect Suyeon from Eunju’s hostile attitude. The closet in particular becomes a trigger for Suyeon as it’s a place where Eunju often locks her up as a punishment.
Weird occurrences begin to happen the firs night when Suyeon hears and sees strange things in her room. When Sumi checks it out she finds a bloody substance in their fridge. Later in the night a ghostly figure stalks up to Sumi as she and Suyeon sleep, the same figure later appears under the counter of the kitchen. The climax of the film is when Suyeon scratches out Eunju’s face in old pictures of Eunju and their father. Eunju finds the pictures and punishes Suyeon by shoving her in the closet as she screams and cries. Sumi hears this and lets her sister out, beginning to apologize for not hearing her. When Sumi confronts her dad about the incident and begs Suyeon to tell their dad what happened, Suyeon stays silent. Sumi begins to scream and shake her sister telling her to speak up about her torment. The camera cuts and the father delivers a line to Sumi that flips the whole story on its head: “Suyeon is dead.”
When this line was first uttered I was in complete shock and confusion, but most of all I slowly felt my heart break for Sumi. The rest of the movie delves deeper into how her psyche has slowly deteriorated over the time that she’s lost her sister. Many revelations happen as we find out Sumi not only imagined Suyeon but also imagined herself as Eunju, so all the actions performed by Eunju were Sumi herself, the only people in the house the whole time was Sumi and her father. We learn at the end of the film that this emotional turmoil is because one day Suyeon found her mother had hung herself in the wardrobe. Suyeon tries to get her mom out of the closet and it tips over, crushing her under the weight of her mother and the closet. Eunju, who had been her mothers nurse at the time, hears the sound and goes upstairs to find a suffocating Suyeon crying for help. Instead of helping Suyeon she leaves the room and as she leaves Sumi walks out of her room seemingly not hearing the commotion. When Eunju asks Sumi if she heard the crash of the wardrobe falling, Sumi gets frustrated by the random question, accusing Eunju of trying too hard to replace their mother. Eunju takes offense to this and decides not to tell Sumi about how her sister is dying in the next room over, instead giving a statement to Sumi that would be the locus of Sumi’s inner torment: “You might regret this moment. Keep that in mind.” Sumi snatches away from Eunju and snaps, “What could be worse than standing here with you?” The film ends as the camera cuts back and forth to Sumi waiting outside for her sister and Suyeon crying out for Sumi as she takes her last breaths.
A Tale of Two Sisters is at its core a story about guilt and grieving. The film is based on a Korean folktale, “Janghwa, Hongryeon” which tells of two sisters who died and revisit the town they died in , telling the townspeople of their untimely death at the hands of their stepmother. When talking about the cultural significance of the film, director Jee-Woon theorizes that there is a reason children are so prominent in Asian horror. Since there is a lack of independence for children in the East, children rely on their parents a great deal, so the loss of a parent can quite negatively affect a child's mental well-being. We see this concept amplified through the psyche of Sumi and how her mind copes with the death of her mother and sister. In order to sort through her trauma and guilt Sumi envisions and acts out scenarios between Suyeon and her. Commonly in the film we view Sumi as a protective sister, always speaking up for Suyeon when “Eunju” harasses them and assuring Suyeon that everythings alright and she’ll always be with her. Upon first viewing one would assume that Sumi is just displaying regular traits of a caring big sister, but once you have the context it becomes clear that all these random mishaps are Sumi trying to, in her mind, atone for failing Suyeon when she needed Sumi most.
Another part of Sumi’s psyche the film explores is that of anger and resentment. In Coralline Dupuy’s journal ““Why Don’t You Remember? Are you Crazy?”: “Korean Gothic and psychosis in A Tale of Two Sisters,”” she theorizes that the Eunju persona that Sumi takes on is her embodying emotions she can’t accept as her own. Various feelings such as resentment toward her father and anger toward herself for not taking action when her sister suffocated. We see these dark unconscious thoughts come to the forefront towards the end of the film when Sumi’s psyche is at its worst. She fabricates a fight between Eunju and her which ends in Eunju knocking Sumi out and dragging her body into the living room hallway. Eunju pulls a heavy, stone statue toward Sumi as she lays limply on the floor. Above Sumi, Eunju communicates to Sumi all the bleak sentiments Sumi has toward herself: “How did it get like this? Don’t you get it yet? Remember when I told you before? Remember when I said you’ll regret it someday? You know what’s really scary? You want to forget something, totally wipe it from your mind, but you never can. It can’t go away – you see –and it follows you around, like a ghost.”
Sumi utters to Eunju asking for help to which Eunju rolls her eyes in anger and continues, “Sure I’ll help you. Let’s end it here.” Eunju stands up and grabs the statue, dropping it onto Sumi. This scene showcases Sumi’s inner thoughts culminating through Eunju, telling her that she needs to face reality because her fantasies were crumbling. In response to this Sumi, through Eunju, tries to kill herself so as to free her mind. She is unsuccessful and as her father finds her passed out alone next to fragments of the statue, he makes a phone call and the real Eunju comes to visit Sumi, completely shattering her fantasy as she is thrust back into reality. Her father and Eunju place her back in the mental institute and she stares off into space as they leave her.
A Tale of Two Sisters is terrifying because of the ideas it tackles when it comes to how our mind handles traumatic events and death. Even though Sumi was not responsible for her sister's death (Eunju saw the event and chose not to help), she is forced to carry that guilt and is trapped in a cycle of trying to atone, but eventually driving herself to insanity. Her house, which she should find security in, has become a place of horror. The repeated, flowery patterns on the wall look pretty at first, but gradually become faded and feel claustrophobic. All of these elements of the mise-en-scene not only give clues as to which parts of Sumi’s life are real or made up, for instance, her father being the only character in neutral colors for the duration of the film, but it also shows how Sumi’s unconscious is becoming more and more violent. The blues, reds and greens within the set design feel more and more vivid as the film progresses, making the house feel all-consuming. Kim Jee-Woon takes the audience through a wide range of emotions, confusion, dread, anger, heartbreak, all parallels to how Sumi is feeling within. A Tale of Two Sisters is a film that brings us home: home to our family, relationships, mishaps and scariest of all, home to our morbid, repressed thoughts.
Sources
Dupuy, Coralline. "'Why don't you remember? Are you crazy?': Korean Gothic and psychosis in A Tale of Two Sisters." Irish Gothic Journal3 (2007): 64.