SISTERS
Shoulda been less respectable

  I've said before that I somehow seem to find Brian De Palma's bad movies even more enjoyable than his good ones, so it was with some trepidation that I approached the widely-respected Sisters.  I needn't have worried - this movie is De Palma all over, and that's good news for everybody, except Harlan Ellison, who once ran screaming from a screening of Blow Out.

I think another reason why I'd always been a little wary of this one is that I could never get a straight description of the plot from anybody.  Having seen it now, I can see why - it takes so long to get that plot underway, the movie's about a third over by the time the murder which sets up the plot actually happens.  With a minimum of spoilage, this movie concerns a now-separated conjoined twin (Margot Kidder), a geographically challenged man (Lisle Wilson, with lines like "Staten Island?  I thought you said New York!  Quebec?  I thought you said you were French!"), an anti-establishment newspaper columnist (Jennifer Salt), and the doctor (William Finley) in charge of a brand new mental hospital (which is disparaged by one character as treating its patients "like real people").  A murder takes place, is witnessed, a body hidden, here comes the cops....it's Hitchcock-a-go-go.

For its 90 minutes, Sisters is fun, but I don't think I would've liked it to have run on much longer.  De Palma's long-running love for inserting Hitchcock homage into his films can certainly be carried too far, and here, he gets awfully close to the edge.  The Rear Window setup was great - the Psycho payoff, less so, not helped by its obviousness.  The story is further hampered by some fairly dumb decisions by its characters (one person's ID is left in her car at a crucial moment, the shades are left open during a scene in which you'd think the occupants of that apartment would very much want them closed, to say nothing of these lethargic cops).  And what's with that shadow on the door?  I thought I had it pegged whose that was the moment I saw it, and by the end of the film, not only is no explanation given, but you might say the explanation is nothing.

But where the movie is dragged down by its plot, it's buoyed by its performances, frequently funny dialogue, and De Palma's trademark filmmaking energy.  The split-screen might've looked like shit in mostly pan-n-scan, but the split-screen sequences are shown on this tape in 1:85.  Some of the scenes are quite suspenseful - one, which cross-cuts between a woman contorting in agony while she waits for a man to bring home her medication, and the man taking his sweet time decorating a cake - walks a fine line between suspense and goofiness, but it works.

Bernard Hermann's score put me off during the opening credits, which showed all these extreme closeups of fetuses, giving the impression of a cheesy 50's monster movie somehow involving a fetus.   But soon his work picked up, and started to feel like music attached to a movie I could take halfway seriously.

I dunno - my appreciation of De Palma's work remains as it was, in that his bad movies (Raising Cain, The Fury) are more fun than his good ones (Scarface, Casualties Of War) (okay, it hasn't escaped me that what constitutes De Palma's good and bad movies is INCREDIBLY subjective).  Sisters was fun, but I'd still rather watch him in a more bizarro, less "respectable" mood.  Still, recommended.

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