Soeurs de sang

A young French-Canadian model and would-be actress Danielle Breton (Kidder) in New York City, meets cute with a black advertising salesman Philip Woode (Wilson), in a proto-reality show "Peeping Tom", which conspicuously heralds director Brian De Palma's intrigue of voyeurism in this lurid genre piece: the urge of killing from a Siamese twin under severe psychological pressure and personality disorder, who has been recently successfully severed from her sister.

Yes, Danielle has a twin sister Dominique, De Palma and co-writer Louisa Rose's script doesn't shy away from steadily implicating that Dominique is the insidious killer who lurks behind the camera, initiates conversations with the personable Danielle, and mercilessly assaults any man who gets intimate with her lovable sister, an emblem of the evil side of the conjoined anomaly, meantime, a bespectacled, bulged-eyed, gangling Emil Breton (Finley), Danielle's ex-husband, looks equally suspicious and sinister with his hidden agenda.

Philip is the jinxed victim who thinks he is getting lucky, but fails to notice that he overstays his welcome due to his own goodwill, how ironic is that? Before succumbing to death, however clumsily, at least he manages to catch the attraction of Grace Collier (Salt), the journalist living in the building across Danielle's apartment, immediately she alerts the police force, but as outlined by the split screen dynamically chronicling the paralleled actions, contrasting the crime scene where Danielle and Emil hastily conceal the dead body (thanks for ruining couch bed for me Mr. De Palma) and clean up the blood, with the detectives dilly-dally their action (racism and sexism are heedfully hinted here) to check Danielle's apartment against Grace's mounting keenness and impatience. What De Palma devises is a stylish and effective cinematic machination, but he also wears his heart on his sleeve, which inconveniently renders the not-so-convoluted story an unwelcome feeling of arbitrariness.

Grace, hogs the limelight thereafter, vigilantly plays detective, digs into the backstories of Danielle and hopes for an exposé, thanks to the assistance of a private eye Joseph Larch (Durning), who will later undertake a tailing mission to a bizarre and goofy cul-de-sac (and literally, the ending of the film). Grace is characterised as an uncouth, career-pursuing knucklehead, we understand that she is a woman of principle, works hard to break the glass ceiling, but her undisguised single- mindedness and wanting for etiquette turn herself into an irritant, consequently pare down viewers' investment into her dangerous pursuit, which ends up in a mental hospital, where Emil finally gives his tell-all recount and discloses the darkest secret of Danielle, while Grace's own sanity will be forever compromised by Emil's hypnotic brainwash. Undeniably, this part is the meat of the story, it is presented from a peculiar angle of an eyeball, with a surreal veneer onto the sensational tale-of-misery by its grotesque tableaux vivants and freaky colour scheme, yet, for my money, Bernard Herrmann's intrusive score is a shade shrill and nerve-racking.

Margot Kidder deserves some kudos for her dualistic impersonation and nails a not-so-irritating French accent, to corroborate her undervalued versatility. It would also turn out to be a wonderful idea for Jennifer Salt to give up acting and become a successful TV producer and writer instead. On the first impression, SISTERS is a testimony of De Palma's forte: injecting a dash of gore into a deeply unsettling psycho-drama, but that doesn't make him an essential master, because a certain requirement of gravitas and punctiliousness is something uniformly absent from most of his works I have watched.

SPOILER: A movie that doesn't really make a lick of sense when you think about it but that is so stylishly entertaining that you can't look away....yep, you guessed it, another Brian De Palma movie.

In this one Margot Kidder plays a woman whose Siamese twin died when they were separated and who now has a good twin/bad twin split personality. The good twin is a mousy thing with a French accent; the bad twin hacks people up with butcher knives. A busy body reporter (Jennifer Salt) who lives across the way witnesses one of the murders and tries to convince the police to investigate. When they don't take her claims seriously, she enlists the help of a private detective (Charles Durning). I'm not sure why she does so, because he does barely anything and she goes off on her own to investigate the crime herself. This leads her to a mental institution where.....oh, just see the wackadoodle thing yourself.

De Palma again tips his not so subtle hat to Hitchcock, and even hires frequent Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann to compose the film's terrific score. Themes of voyeurism (again, see Hitchcock) abound, but I'm not sure what De Palma is really using them to say, or indeed if he's trying to say anything at all. I just enjoyed watching his groovy use of split screens.

Grade: B+

De Palma don't make 'em like this anymore. Brilliant, creepy psychological thriller concerning French-Canadian twin sisters Danielle and Dominique (Margot Kidder). One is seemingly normal and one is seemingly insane. One is an actress who, while on a game show, wins dinner with one of its contestants, Philip (Lisle Wilson). The two have an enjoyable time, and even end up spending the night together back at her apartment. The next day, Philip awakens to the two sisters arguing in the next room. Danielle then asks Philip to go into town and purchase some more medicine for her. He does so and, out of the kindness of his heart, purchases a birthday cake for the sisters, since today is their birthday. Upon his return, the thrills begin and Jennifer Salt decides to investigate these weird goings-on. SISTERS is a very eerie thriller from Brian De Palma which features his outstanding scriptwriting/direction, Paul Hirsch's top-notch editing, Bernard Hermann's welcome nerve-jangling score, not to mention the awesome split-screen, enabling us to see two events at one time. Despite the ultimately strange conclusion, the film is a creeper and not to be missed. 9/10

Starts out very strong, and you can tell pretty quickly that De Palma is already a far stronger director than he was when he made Murder A La Mod just a few years prior.

The mystery is initially interesting, and the extended sequence where split screens are used is also great (if a little gimmicky, but it's a fun gimmick, and probably far less common back in the 1970s).

Unfortunately it lost steam for me in the second half. It starts to really emphasise the "psychological" part of psychological thriller, and I don't think it does so particularly well. The theme of doubles/pairs is often popular in thrillers, but I didn't think it was too well-explored here. By the end, it was difficult to feel very invested in the way things wrapped up.

But as far as early De Palma goes, this might be the earliest film of his I've seen that definitely feels very "De Palma", in the sense that it has his distinct visual style already quite well defined.

It's worth a watch for those stylish visuals and the strong first half, but in the end it was still a very slight disappointment.

Brian De Palma is often unfairly dismissed as "that guy that rips off Hitchcock", a statement that overlooks the variety of his output. Of his twenty-odd full length movies only a handful have been thrillers, in fact before 'Sisters' he was best know as a maker of quirky comedies like 'Greetings' and 'Get To Know Your Rabbit'. 'Sisters' was De Palma's first foray into Hitchcock territory, and I think his subsequent stereotyping shows just how impressive he was in this genre. He has made several more famous and successful movies subsequent to this one, but it still remains one of his most entertaining works. Margot Kidder, a few years prior to her fame as Lois Lane, is brilliant as troubled separated siamese twins with a secret. Jennifer Salt ('Midnight Cowboy') plays a spunky newspaper columnist who believes she has witnessed one of the twins commit a murder (a deliberate nod to 'Rear Window'). She cannot get the police to believe her and begins to do her own investigations, helped by a small time private eye Larch (Charles Durning - 'Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?'). She finds out that there is a lot more to the sisters' than meets the eye, and vows to find out what is really going on. Kidder is of course the star of the movie, but equally memorable is De Palma regular William Finley ('The Phantom Of The Paradise', 'Eaten Alive') in a wonderfully creepy performance as one of twins ex-husband. Kidder and Finley and De Palma's assured direction, which includes a brilliant murder sequence and cool use of split screen in another, make this a thriller that won't easily be forgotten. Highly recommended.