Review of Sister My Sister

I caught this movie one Sunday morning on HBO nearly seven years ago and I've never forgotten it. I had never heard of it before but ended up watching it because I was up early with my baby daughter (OK...so maybe it's not exactly the type of movie to watch with a sleeping infant in your arms but I couldn't get up to change the channel because I thought I'd wake her). ANYWAY...let's just say that anyone calling this boring is way off the mark. This is one of those movie's that is so odd but strangely compelling that you are completely riveted to it. It's very sensationalistic with all the Lesbianism and such but it creates such a creepy undercurrent of tension and anxiety that it's nearly impossible to resist watching it. The two women (actually a Mother, played by the wildly UNDER-rated Julie Walters and her dowdy daughter) are at first happy with their live in maids. But slowly both the Mother and Daughter's cloistered lives intertwine with the Maids. Jealousy and rivalry begin to tear apart at all of their lives. The teenaged daughter is secretly jealous of the maid's freedom in going out. There is one brilliant scene where the Mother at first tells the daughter that they might go to Paris. This gets the Daughter incredibly excited and happy and then the Mother abruptly (and deliberatly and cruelly) changes her mind to emotionally torture the young girl. The end result is a scene *SPOILERS HERE* of breathtaking violence. I don't think I'm going too far in comparing it with the ending of Scorcese's "Taxi Driver". Both endings have a strange kind of orgasmic quality of it. Both movies build up the tension among its characters that eventually (almost inevitably) leads to an explosion of violence. The acting is uniformly good throughout. Amazing to consider that there are only four characters in the whole movie. A great find. Not for all tastes (prudish types or easily shocked BEWARE!) But for others, especially those with a penchant for odd stories like the kind you find in True-Crime fiction type books and magazines, this one is for you!