Steve Smith
This is an interesting story of two sisters' relationship that changes after their mother's death. The cinematography is clean and clear, and the actors deliver their lines and actions with clarity. The story is muddled, though, and the characters a bit contrived. The whole of the film takes place in an idyll, where the girls live in their dead mother's home, go swimming in the local river, play dress-up with their mother's old clothes, and even go to the local carnival together. It is, of course, fantasy, but it strikes me as a languid and self-indulgent.There's an obvious push to make things seem as if there were an incestuous tension between the two, but it's so frequent and slyly ended that it can be ignored rather quickly as an annoying noise that fades with repetition. Both girls act more like early teenagers than the actors' 20+ years of age; though living in a small town, they press against each other and dance together (and Marie pulls a guy's hand off of Mary's butt) in ways that would be scandalous even if they weren't sisters. Their competition for the attentions of the handyman (who seems to have no deadline to his work) is one of the few things that rings true in this film. Still, it all would have worked better with teenagers rather than grown women.The actors are all competent, and would do well in the right roles, but the script seemed as if it should have arrived in a diary with a lock and heart-shaped stickers stuck to the front. There may well be women like this, but I've never met adults like Mary and Marie.And in the end, they aren't sisters at all. :D
