Sisters
SYNOPSIS
Two elderly Hollywood artist sisters must defend themselves from a dangerous vagrant who moves into their home and takes over their lives. A distant relative steps up to help, but soon discovers a dark web of tangled family mysteries, an estranged super model daughter and the violent suicide of their father, forcing them all to confront some unwelcome truths. Meanwhile the vagrant threatens their reputations with blackmail, works to deprive them of everything and begins to believe he is the angel who visited them, inspiring their most famous painting.
Conceived as a psychological thriller and based on a true story, Sisters provides strong roles for two distinguished older actresses and a younger, malevolent male protagonist, who begins to take over their lives. Is he really a stranger or has something in their past led him to them?
Daphne Huntington and Venetia Epler, two lovable and eccentric painters who have worked in the Golden age of Hollywood, creating backdrops for MGM musicals, animation backgrounds as well as painting a portrait of president Eisenhower and the biggest religious mural in the western World, the Life of Christ mural at Forest Lawn cemetery.
The sisters’ cousin Chris, an East Coast film producer and photographer has been helping them with their chaotic financial affairs for twenty years and has known them ever since visiting them as a callow 19-year-old in 1973, when he fell in love with Daphne’s glamorous super model daughter Charlie, who showed him the sights of Hollywood.
Now, in 2002, when the Sisters’ brother Richie dies in mysterious circumstances, Chris must return for the funeral. Mementos from the past, plunge him back into his memories from 1973, of promising to preserve the sisters’ extraordinary legacy and his romantic road trip with Charlie which ended with his witnessing her sleeping with another man.
After a lifetime of failed affairs, Venetia easily falls prey to Nate’s charms, seeing him more as an angel than a threat. Daphne disapproves, but is distracted by the estrangement of her daughter Charlie, who seems to have disappeared without a trace. Daphne secretly worries about Charlie’s welfare. Yet she
withholds from Venetia and Chris how she and Charlie had argued about the identity of her father, who supposedly died when Charlie was still a child. Is it possible that Daphne knows where Charley is?
The film parallels Nate’s pursuit of the vulnerable Venetia with Chris’ crush on Charlie during a romantic road trip in 1973. Both plot strands climax together with Chris stumbling upon Charlie making love to an old boyfriend, and Daphne coming downstairs to discover the appalling apparition of despicable Nate dancing with Venetia dressed in the suit their Father wore when he committed suicide.
As Chris tries to rid the house of Nate and his belongings, Nate watches from nearby. Once Chris leaves, Nate secretly begins living upstairs, boring holes in the floor to spy on the sisters. Nate uses photos found in brother Richie’s room, that suggest Richie may have been Charlie’s true father, to blackmail the sisters. Meanwhile, Chris manages to track down Charlie, who accuses him of having her followed in an outburst of paranoia. Charlie refuses to explain why she has cut herself off from the family, but threateningly boasts that she has someone keeping an eye on things at the sisters’ Hollywood home.
Chris searches the sisters’ house for proof of Nate’s intrusion and discovers a photo of a young man. He realizes the photo matches one he saw on Charlie’s keychain in 1973, a presumed ex-boyfriend whom Chris is now shocked to see unexpectedly resembles a younger Nate. Could Nate be connected to Charlie in some way?
Eventually Nate finds a gun hidden in the room with the angel painting - the gun Daphne and Venetia’s father used to commit suicide. Dressed in their father’s suit, Nate confronts the sisters, brandishing an alleged suicide note he claims he found in one of the suit pockets. Nate reveals that the note confirms brother Richie was Charlie’s true father while also disclosing other unsavory secrets about the sisters’ early lives.
Obsessed by their religious paintings because of his tough up-bringing, and obsessed with the figure of the angel, Nate turns on the sisters, alleging their sordid past and revealing his own dark nature. In a contemptuous rage, Nate demands the deed of the house in return for his silence on the note’s secrets. Incensed, Daphne gashes Nate’s arm with a palette knife. He stumbles. Daphne snatches the gun and shoots, sending him tumbling out into the yard. When the sisters follow to investigate, they find only a trail of blood, suggesting Nate was hit, but is still alive.
Nate’s body was never found and ten years later, as Chris clears the last of the sister’s paintings from their house he remains convinced that Nate has returned and was the person who left the fresh bunch of flowers on the sisters’ vault.
Although the sisters never revealed their secrets, Chris discovers that Daphne left him a clue in a cryptic note placed between the pages of a paperback left behind at her hospice. Daphne explains that she did what she had to do regarding Charlie’s disruptive father but that the answer to the mystery of who that was is written on the back of one of the Sister’s paintings. But which one?
As a new young family move into the sister’s house a hidden canvas by Venetia is discovered, with a note from Charlie tucked into its frame. The painting is a beach scene, full of hope as two magical kites fly high into the blue Californian sky.