Sister My Sister

Sister My Sister is a 1994 film starring British actresses Julie Walters, Joely Richardson, and Jodhi May.[1] The film was directed by Nancy Meckler and written by Wendy Kesselman, based on her own play, My Sister in This House.[1]

Sister My Sister
DVD cover
Directed byNancy Meckler
Written byWendy Kesselman
Starring
Music byStephen Warbeck
Distributed byBritish Screen Productions
Channel Four Films
NFH Productions
Release date
  • 1994 (1994)
Running time
89 min.
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

The film is based on a true incident in Le Mans, France in 1933 called the Papin murder case, where two sisters brutally murdered their employer and her daughter. The murder shocked the country, and there was much speculation about the sisters, including allegations that they were having an incestous lesbian affair.

Plot

In 1933 France, Christine (Richardson) is the maid of a well-to-do middle-aged widow (Julie Walters) and her teenage daughter (Sophie Thursfield). Her younger sister, Lea (May) is hired on the recommendation of Christine. The two sisters become increasingly alienated from their employer, separated by barriers between the classes. The employer and her daughter look down on the sisters for the most trivial things, and it soon becomes the norm for the two pairs of women to not even speak directly to each other.

With only each other to turn to, the relationship becomes sexual, adding to the tension between the sisters and their employer. Both of them deal with trauma brought on by strained relationships with their mother and others of the church. Over time, there are continual rumors of the employer’s daughter getting married and moving out. Christine becomes paranoid and jealous that Lea will go with her when that day comes, and she’ll be left nothing, but Lea assures her this isn’t the case. Christine fears she is a monster like her mother.

One day, the iron blows a fuse and burns the daughter’s blouse Lea was preparing. Short on money and time, the sisters resign to their fate; when their employer and her daughter angrily return from a shopping trip, Christine tries to explain what happened. The employer claims she knows what she’s done with her sister and they’ll never work again once word gets out.

The sisters fly into a rage and brutally murder the employer and her daughter. The movie ends on a crime report detailing the state of their corpses as someone knocks on the mansion door. The naked sisters again cling to each other desperately as audio plays of an investigator questioning them on the murder, followed by Christine screaming for Lea.

Cast

The Papin case was also the subject of The Maids, a play by Jean Genet written in 1949 that was adapted by Christopher Miles into a 1974 film of the same name. It starred Glenda Jackson and Susannah York as the maids, and Vivien Merchant as their employer.

It is also mentioned in a 1995 French film of Claude Chabrol, La Cérémonie, with Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire. The characters are not the Papin sisters, but are two women that end up murdering their employer. It is an adaptation from the novel A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell.

The story was also filmed as Murderous Maids, a French film starring Sylvie Testud and Julie-Marie Parmentier, and directed by Jean-Pierre Denis.

See also

List of LGBT-related films directed by women

References

  1. James, Caryn (1995). "Sister My Sister". The New York Times.
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