January 4 2010
Sister, My Sister; Murderous Maids
Peter Jackson’s 1994 drama Heavenly Creatures recounts a sensational murder case from 1950s New Zealand. Considering his previous work—the special effects and gore-heavy Bad Taste and Braindead—Jackson’s take on teen lesbian murderesses is a bit tame in comparison. Florid fantasy scenes convey the troubled girls’ escapist affection, contrasting with the coldness of their crime. The climactic matricide is disturbing but lacks the essential ingredient to really arouse an audience: incest.
For scandalous tales of youth you can’t beat the Papin sisters of 1930s France, housemaids whose improper relationship supposedly led to a brutal murder. Two movies offer fictionalized tellings of the sordid events. For all of their similarities the films could hardly be more different.
1994’s Sister, My Sister is a British production that seems better suited for the stage. It’s dialogue-heavy with minimal drab sets and costuming. Aside from a nun’s backside and an unseen photographer, the characters are pretty much limited to the Papin siblings, their upper class widow employer and her spoiled daughter. Their acting is overly dramatic to the point of caricature. The candy-coveting rich daughter could be one of the cartoonish brats lost in Willy Wonka’s factory of traps, and like them her death is a relief from her awfulness. She’s made miserable by an over-protective and agoraphobic mother. Their housebound co-dependence plays like Grey Gardens: The Early Years, and while entertaining it does little to make them sympathetic victims of mutilation. The Papin siblings’ emotional breakdown and sexual obsession seem sudden and somewhat under-explained despite constant exposition. Their trysts add titillation rather than insight to their damaged identities. Equally excessive is their final act of violence. The opening scenes’ bloody stairwell did less to foreshadow the climax than to make me impatient during the filling before the killing.
Leave it to the French to do their country’s scandal justice. 2004’s Murderous Maids is as gritty and sensuous as Sister is generic and dull. Colors and textures are sumptuous in a convincingly detailed provincial setting. The Papins are nuanced characters with real personality and depth. Their lives are tied in a complicated knot of familial responsibilities, class segregation and religious guilt. Instead of incessantly talking about their troubled psyches they show every crack through subtle glances, involuntary twitches, and muscles stiffened against each day’s despair. Christine’s eyes are gauges to the paranoia and craziness burbling inside her, while Lea’s attain a glaze to match the hardening of her youthful spirit. We meet their desperate shrew of a mother, see the harshness of their religious schooling, and view first-hand the conditions chipping away their childhoods that the other film only hints at. The sisters’ bond is built around admiration of the older and protection of the younger, progressively becoming more insular and inappropriate as life outside their bedroom worsens. Their notable difference in age and sexual understanding contributes to an already creepy closeness. While Maids is the more explicit film, the eroticism is uncomfortable to watch. Sister’s denouement is underwhelming despite being described in grisly detail. This film’s less-stagey murder scene is tense and shocking, even with a title as spoilerish as Kill Bill.
In short, Sister, My Sister could take place anywhere, anytime, with little sense of motivation. Murderous Maids not only made me care for a psychotic killer and her naive accomplice but had me thanking God I wasn’t alive in the wretched slums and time that borne them.
Sister, My Sister: 
Murderous Maids: 
