Oh Brother
Journalist Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) lives across the way from aspiring French Canadian actress Danielle Breton (Margot Kidder) and is convinced that she witnessed a man murdered in Danielle's apartment by her twin sister Dominique (Margot Kidder). But when Grace calls the police not only do they not find anything in Danielle's apartment but are less than helpful towards Grace over a piece she wrote on the police and why they are called Pigs. Convinced she wasn't seeing things Grace hires detective Joseph Larch (Charles Durning) to help her look in to what is going on.
Here we go again as I watch a movie from the 70s which seemed to impress many but left me utterly bemused both by he movie and what others saw in it. The movie I am on about is Brian De Palma's "Sisters" which seemed to impress audiences back in 1973 with its obvious homage to Hitchcock and story which features an ample slice of voyeurism and visual techniques which include use of a split screen to show things going on at two separate locales at the same time. It just didn't do it for me and whilst technically it replicates aspects of Hitchcock it didn't have the atmosphere which made Hitchcock's movies more than just visual tricks.
The other issue I have with "Sisters" is that De Palma seems unsure of what he wants to be. The opening scene which features a TV show built on voyeurism seems to scream satire yet it switches to drama for long periods of time only to then toss something strange, comedic like at us every now and then such as someone slipping over whilst cleaning up the murder scene whilst thanks to the split screen we see the police are not far away. It makes it unsure of what it wants to be and overly obvious.
Overly obvious or in other words unsubtle is what plagues the entire movie from De Palma making it abundantly apparent as to what is going on to the acting. It is the acting where sadly things go really wrong with Margot Kidder highly forced French Canadian accent ending up more than comical.
What this all boils down to is that "Sisters" really didn't do it for me as from start to finish it feels confused as to what it wants to be and ridiculously unsubtle with far too much of it coming across as forced. Worst thing is that once you become aware of one thing to do with Danielle you can guess the rest.
