After 26 years, I think we are all mature enough to talk about Sister my Sister, right?

Right.

Ah who am I kidding, the world has actually gone backwards lately, believe it or not, but really I don’t give a fuck. So let’s talk about this award-winning wincest movie that came out all the way back in 1994 and starring one of our favourites in Jodhi May, who plays the younger sister Lea.

 

 

 

 

Seriously, if you don’t know who Jodhi May is, first of all shame on you! Second, she was also in the BBC adaptation of Sarah Waters’ Tipping The Velvet as Florence!! That is to say, she is a regular in the community and thus should be on your list!

Anyway, the story follows sisters who were separated at birth but get re-united a few years later when the elder sister Christine (Joely Richardson) manages to arrange for Lea to come and work with her as a fellow maid to one of the neighbourhood’s most established Ladies! As you can surmise, the movie tackles many social issues like suppression and classification but we are not interested in all that!

Of course they are why this movie won awards and is well regarded to the point of even getting a French remake in 2000! I am in the middle of getting this French version myself as I write this and I am surprised I did not know about it until today but hey, nobody is perfect, right?

Sister my Sister is the first and probably only true wincest movie I have ever come across so if you know any more, do let me know! Yes, Lea and Christine are real sisters, with an age gap of 5 years. Though when they were younger that gap did not look that huge but anyway, it is hard to tell how old they were during the movie’s main story-time but I bet Christine was like 20 or something which would make Lea about 15.

PS: If you are a purist, why are you still here? GTFO now! It’s for you own protection!

To put the story short, Lea and Christine’s re-connection doesn’t go quite as planned as they develop purely romantic feelings for one another! On top of that, with their lives already chaotic given the forbidden secret they were keeping and trying to cope with, there is the pressure that their mistress has over them! Problems escalate when Lea burns the daughter of the house’s dress and Christine breaks a glass!

Given the controlling nature of the Mistress that spelled game over but even that was the least of their problems when the masters of the house came back unexpectedly and with Lea and Christine already out of their minds, they came out half-dressed to meet the mistress who was quick to put two and two together and figure out that they were being immoral!

With everything at the deep end, Christine strikes first, going for the Mistress’s eyes which she full out of the socket with bare hands and in the end the two end up killing mother and daughter in a fit of blind panic! They were so broken by then and so lost that instead of running away after the murder, they went back up to their room and had sex, from the look of things as the police found them entangled and naked in their bed!

As per the endings back then, we get their fate in end cards which tell us that Lea was imprisoned for twenty years and after served as a hotel care-taker until her death years later. She lived her life but there was no mention of family so I am guessing she never loved anyone else again. As for Christine, at first she was sentenced at the gallows a la Sarah Waters’ infamous Fingersmith death punishments but she was spared and put into an asylum instead. She did not survive long as she died four years later due to depression and mental instability. Her love for Lea was that strong that she could not even live without her! Her testimonial was spend with her just crying for Lea and begging the jury to let her see Lea! They probably didn’t!

Yeah, if we are going to love how real the movie was, how so perfect the story was painted to be as realistic as possible, then we have to know that realistically, there wouldn’t have been a happy ending, given that this was set in the early 1900s!

But despite the bleak ending, I love this movie so very much!

The actors all did a great job with this movie! You could feel the intensity of every scene! You felt the weight of the feelings the sisters had for one another! Both the alien of the feelings as that was the first time they had had those kinds of feelings for anyone and also the uncomfortable feeling of it all as they knew and we knew that they were not normal feelings! All those uneasy was fully conveyed by the atmosphere and the actors’ work!

And by God, I totally forgot how so intense their scene were! I can’t believe this is rated 15 in the US! That simply can’t be right! I know the French version will be more mature than this one just as I am certain that it won’t be as good as this one! I guess that’s one thing to look forward to in that version!

Seriously, there are very few movies out there in the world that convey feelings as well as this movie does! You will feel every single moment between Lea and Christine and despite the fact that they were in the wrong in the end when they committed murder, which was for naught given that the world still found out their immorality, you won’t help but feel for them!

Seriously, so in the top tem of best on screen chemistry in the history of film!

Jump over for caps…

Ja

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