Like any good melodrama worth a toilet paper roll's worth of coarse tissue, Shin Sang-ok's Sister's Garden finds its emotionally distraught characters collapsing on the floor in tears multiple times. Who can blame them? They've got a lot to cry about, the rent first and foremost. Turns out the widowed father (Yu Chun), a beloved doctor dying of a disease he once cured in others, is going to leave some serious debts behind. Once the martyring eldest daughter (Choi Eun-hie) figures out a way to make some money, she's suddenly saddled with a second IOU after her impetuous sister (Choi Ji-hie) opens a not-so-popular dress shop with her not-so-successful painter-husband (Nam Gung-won). What's a girl to do?
Become a madam at a disreputable inn, start drinking alcohol to please the crass customers, forsake her true love — a tight-lipped medical student (Kim Seok-hun), and consider the marriage proposal made by one Mr. Bang (Kim Seung-ho), a shady character whom her father restored to health but who nevertheless can't resist an opportunity to pimp her out to make a buck. Maybe this good-daughter-about-to-turn-bad wouldn't go to such extremes if she didn't have a much younger brother (Ahn Sung-ki) to take care of. But then again, maybe she's grown bored with the bourgeois life and isn't that crazy about becoming a doctor's wife. Whatever her reasons, you get the feeling that the nasty turn of events has awakened something inside her. When the swell of "Ol' Man River" is heard behind this movie's "happy ending," you can't help but recall the lyric "You and me / We sweat and strain / Body all aching / And wracked with pain." In other words, the potential for "good times ahead" looks doubtful. Perhaps "Get a little drunk / And you land in jail" isn't such a terrible fate after all.
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