An Interpretation
(a LONG one at that - sorry - you're gonna need a pot of tea and a packet of hobnobs to get through this)
NB: All of 'reality' is an interpretation ;-)
Firstly, I'd like to point out that I have only seen this film once (last night) and have seen no write-ups, synopses or trailers whatsoever. Secondly, if you want to read reviews about the film, I daresay you'll find quite a few elsewhere on the net. This isn't a review, although on that front I would say that I thought the film was extremely engaging, creepy and emotive. Great stuff. Go see it. My apologies for the rambling nature of this piece - it's not very well put together and isn't necessarily in order of events in the film. I'll probably edit it later, to make it more coherent! All comments are most welcome :-)
At the start of the film we see a psychiatrist talking to Su-mi. He asks her "Who do you think you are". This is a clue for the rest of the film - the girl obviously has serious mental health problems and also suffers from multiple personality disorder. The so-called 'stepmother' did not exist as a stepmother - this was one of Su-mi's personalities (brought about partly by the fact that she felt overwhelming guilt and confusion about leaving her sister to die under the closet where she had found her mother hanging). However, Su-mi was already suffering from mental illness, before she found her mother and sister. The 'stepmother' was in fact an employee of the psychiatric hospital, possibly a psychiatric nurse. The reason she was in some of the family photos was probably because of Su-mi's long-standing illness, i.e. she most likely stayed in the home to supervise home visits or something. It's also quite possible that Su-mi’s mother suffered from mental illness and this is why she killed herself. I could go further and surmise that the mother had a suspicious mind and thought that her husband was having an affair with the psychiatric nurse (thereby planting the seed into Su-mi's mind that they would marry and she would become her evil stepmother. Su-mi may also have viewed it as this 'stepmother' woman had caused her mother to kill herself, so she transferred her guilty feelings onto this character and gave it life at that point).
This film is from the perspective of Su-mi (at the beginning, the psychiatrist asks her to describe the events of ‘that day’). The images of the 'stepmother' interacting with Su-yeon were all conducted in Su-mi's mind, rather than acted out physically. For example, the scene in which the 'stepmother' locks Su-yeon in the closet and then cuts to Su-mi lying asleep on the bed. She had 'dreamt' this scene (if it had actually happened, she would have heard the screaming). Su-mi’s dreams meld with her 'reality' as she is so confused and ill. She cannot differentiate between reality, dream states and her concocted personalities. These are so strong that she actually 'sees' these people and fully believes that they are there. Pieces of reality get intertwined in her imaginative world, eg, the blood in the bed, which was there because she had come on during the night. The fear that something, something which looks obviously dead, is 'coming to get her' (with long hair and neck hanging to one side - clue to mother), is a result of her overwhelming guilt. She cannot escape what she did, and it haunts her in various different ways. (NB: By this I do not mean ‘haunts’ as in what ghosts do! There are no ghosts in this film.)
The scene where the 'stepmother' gets in bed to wait for the father to come to bed; he gets into bed but you can see that there is absolutely no adult/sexual love there. He puts his arm around her in a fatherly way until she goes to sleep, and then goes downstairs to sleep. The poor man always looks utterly drained and confused, and at no point do you feel that he is married to this ‘stepmother’ woman – it appears to be a very strange relationship.
The father never interacts with Su-yeon – only Su-mi (or Su-mi acting as her ‘stepmother’). There’s a scene in which Su-mi asks him why he’s always asking her to understand – why
her? (because she’s the only one there with her father).
At the dinner table near the beginning of the film, when Su-mi storms off, the 'stepmother' says to Su-yeon 'Aren't you going to follow your sister - you always follow your sister'. Again, this did not actually happen. Su-mi was still thinking of this scenario as she walked away, so this was all in her mind.
You often see the 'stepmother' experiencing the same 'frightening things' as Su-mi, because they are one-and-the-same person. The medication is also a clue.
When that couple come over for dinner, and the 'stepmother' (Su-mi) goes ‘off on one’, but the poor bloke says he can't remember any of it (because it's all made up by Su-mi). His partner had what appeared at first to be a choking fit, and then looked more like a seizure and later said she saw 'a girl' under the sink - what we saw her see in the film was the 'stepmother's' (Su-mi's) slippers, standing by the sink. It is possible that (a) Su-mi hid under the sink when this woman had her fit, but also (b) that it was just the three of them having dinner (father and the couple), and that Su-mi was hiding under the sink the whole time (so she concocted that mad laughing outburst, etc, in her mind). I think this is more likely. The bloke took ages to respond to her asking him if he remembered, and he could have been responding to something else - something the father said. Don’t forget - this film is all from the perspective of Su-mi's deranged mind.
The dragging the bloody sack around the house - we know from a later scene that the sack contained dolls. This was another bizarre 'acting out' by Su-mi, brought about by the fact that in some way she felt that she had killed her sister (by leaving her to die). So she was acting out the worst scenario of this belief - cutting her into pieces so she would fit into a sack, then beating the bloody remains*. The 'fight' that later ensued between her and the 'stepmother' was in fact just her throwing herself around the room. We see her stab her 'stepmother' in the hand with scissors, but the blood is on Su-mi's hand. Also, it was Su-mi who threw the statue on the floor and then got down to lie amongst the pieces.
Think ‘Fight Club’ but with more substance.
*NB: You don’t actually see the first bit of this, which is just my guess, but how else would you have a body in a small sack with blood all over the place?
When the 'stepmother' comes in at the end of the film, this is the psychiatric nurse who the father had telephoned to come and pick up Su-mi, to take her back to the hospital. This is the scene where the 'stepmother' personality of Su-mi then becomes Su-mi again. Everything falls into place at this point!
At the end, when Su-mi has been committed and the 'stepmother' is sitting on the bed - this is also a concoction of Su-mi's mind (although it could have been the psychiatric nurse sitting there, since it was the hospital). Afterwards, the father drives home and the 'stepmother' appears to be with him. Again, this is not happening, but is what Su-mi imagines is happening (she's back in the funny farm and dreams/imagines what happens next as her father leaves). So all the stuff in one of the closing scenes about the ‘stepmother’ pulling the tag out from between the pillows in the closet is only occurring in Su-mi's mind. None of this actually happened.
I think I’ll go and see the film again, as it will no doubt clarify my thoughts!
