Sister My Sister - DaaVeeDee

Sister My Sister (DVD) (*)

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Screened, competed or awarded at:
Other Film Festival Awards

Language Selections:
Dutch ( Subtitles )
English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )
French ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
Netherlands ( PAL/Region 2 )

Running Time:
86 min

Aspect Ratio:
Fullscreen

Special Features:
Interactive Menu

Movie filmed in 1994 and produced in:
United Kingdom ( Great Britain, Ireland )
United States ( USA, Canada )

Directed By:
Nancy Meckler

Written By:
Wendy Kesselman

Actors:
Julie Walters ..... Madame Danzard
Joely Richardson ..... Christine
Jodhi May ..... Lea
Sophie Thursfield ..... Isabelle Danzard
Amelda Brown ..... Visitor
Lucita Pope ..... Visitor
Kate Gartside ..... Sister Veronica
Aimee Schmidt ..... Young Lea
Gabriella Schmidt ..... Young Christine

Synopsis:

In this stark drama based on actual events in a small French town in the early '30s, a pair of repressed sisters slowly lose their grip on reality, leading to horrific consequences at the home where they're employed as maids. Christine (Joely Richardson), a domestic servant in the home of haughty widow Madame Danzard (Julie Walters), takes pride in her efficiency and deference. Raised by nuns, Christine bitterly resents her penniless mother, but remains devoted to her younger, similarly convent-reared sister, Lea (Jodhi May). When Lea, too, comes to work for Madame Danzard, Christine trains her dutifully while also driving a wedge between the girl and their mother. The sisters' emotional bond eventually becomes a sexual one, too, and as they turn inward their work suffers, leading to increasing disapproval from their employer. Meanwhile, Christine is driven mad with jealousy at what she perceives as a flirtation between Lea and Madame Danzard's sullen daughter, Isabelle (Sophie Thursfield). Tensions reach a boiling point when the widow and her daughter return home one evening to find burned garments, uncompleted housework, and the sisters holed up in their room together, smelling of sex. Adapted by Wendy Kesselman from her Pulitzer Prize-winning play, My Sister in This House, Sister My Sister was based on the true story of Christine and Lea Papin, whose grisly 1933 murders have also inspired several other works. In addition to Jean Genet's 1948 play The Maids, the incident was the basis for Jean-Pierre Denis' feature Les Blessures Assassines and the documentary En Quete Des Soeurs Papin, both released in 2000. The real-life Christine Papin died after four years in prison, but Lea was released after ten years of hard labor and lived for several more decades in another small French town.

Christine and Lea are exemplary maidservants whose fastidious appearance and attention to duty are the delight of their tyrannical new mistress, Madame Danzard. Madame Danzard and her daughter command an immaculate townhouse and lead lives of perfect bourgeois respectability. The reward for the sisters'' hard labor is the few free hours they spend with each other. Literally trapped in the house and on edge from Madame Danzard''s overbearing treatment, Christine and Lea attempt to find refuge in each other, but their obsessive emotional ties reach a sexual pitch, which overrides their sense of duty. Uncomprehending of the sexual fever that is growing betweem the two girls, but aware that her authority is slipping away, Madame Danzard resorts to greater cruelties against them until the pressure finally reaches a breaking point.

This product was added to our catalog on Wednesday 18 July, 2007.

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