Format: DVD from Somonauk Public Library through interlibrary loan on the new portable.
Years ago, a friend of mine was working on her PhD in film. I asked her what she was doing her dissertation on, she told me she was doing a comparison of modern horror movies with traditional fairy tales. It was (and still is) a great idea. In her opinion, the two share the same set of morals. A Tale of Two Sisters (Janghwa, Honglyeon, which evidently translates as “Rose Flower, Red Lotus”) could well be exhibit A. This is apparently based on a traditional Korean folktale modernized very effectively.
I don’t want to go into a lot of detail here. A Tale of Two Sisters is a good enough movie that it should be gone into as cold as possible. The less you know about this, the better. The reason for that is that, even if I am careful, there’s a lot that I can give away here without meaning to. I could, for instance, compare this to a couple of movies that would give a very clear picture of the story, but it would also very clearly ruin the story for someone who had seen those movies. I don’t even want to put them under a spoiler tag for fear of someone catching sight of them. A Tale of Two Sisters deserves that.
