what the film does
sally and gillian owens are sisters descended from a line of witches. a family curse kills any man who loves an owens woman. raised by their aunts frances and jet (dianne wiest and stockard channing) after their parents die, the sisters try to live normal lives. sally marries and loses her husband to the curse. gillian runs, ends up with an abusive boyfriend named jimmy angelov (goran visnjic), and when jimmy dies the sisters must use the magic they spent their lives avoiding to survive.
the film shifts registers hard. the first act is warm domestic comedy. the second is a crime coverup with a body in the car. the third is an exorcism. aidan quinn plays the detective who falls for sally while investigating the missing boyfriend. alan silvestri wrote the score.
why this one
the film was panned on release (27 percent on rotten tomatoes) and became a cult favorite anyway. the audience score is 73 percent and climbing. the gap between critical reception and audience love is the film’s defining feature, and it exists because the film does not behave the way a studio supernatural romance is supposed to behave. it keeps breaking its own contract.
the owens house is the other reason. warner bros built a full three-story victorian on a hilltop on san juan island in washington state, with a wraparound porch, a greenhouse, and a kitchen that production designer robin standefer stuffed with hanging herbs, copper pots, and spell jars. the house became a pilgrimage site. it is one of the most photographed movie houses of the 1990s.
what stays with me
the midnight margaritas scene. bullock and kidman, drunk on bad tequila, dancing in the kitchen to harry nilsson’s “coconut.” the scene has nothing to do with the plot. it is the film at its best: two actresses who became actual friends during production, loose, warm, and completely outside the genre machinery around them. bullock confirmed in the dvd commentary that they were actually drunk. kidman brought the tequila.
on hand
the dvd is the warner home video release in the canon.
image: tmdb backdrop; genuine film still of the owens women on the mansion rooftop. baked through scripts/bake_dark_photo.py at factor 0.45, 1200x675