Relationships between siblings can range from highly amicable to incredibly destructive. Many cinematic and television endeavors reflect these familial constructs with the loving kinship of The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family to the infinitely insane relations of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes. While these are extremes at both ends of the range, sibling ties can be tumultuous.
Rock, Paper and Scissors (Piedra, Papel Y Tijera), an Argentinean offering produced by Yellow Veil Pictures and distributed by Habanero Film Sales, provides us a contained twisted tale of a wounded family that festers into a hostage situation rife with terror.
Upon the death of her father, Magdalena (Augustina Cerviño) returns to her childhood home where she is greeted by her brother Jesús (Pablo Sigal) and her older sister María José (Valeria Giorcelli) who is discovered to be her father’s caretaker. While the siblings discuss their father’s estate, Magdalena suggests that the house be sold, and the money divided between the three. Suddenly, Magdalena is severely injured from a devastating fall down a flight of stairs in the house. She comes to in the guest bedroom with Jesús and María José hovering over her. Crippled by the fall and held hostage by her brother and sister, Magdalena becomes entrapped in a web of family secrets of hatred, abuse, and neglect. In addition to the secrets, Magdalena, in her confinement, plays a role in Jesús’ and María José’s homemade movie of a lurid interpretation of The Wizard of Oz.
Co-written and directed by the duo of Martin Blousson and Macarena García Lenzi, they craft and drive Rock, Paper, and Scissors into an insane circus of clannish cruelty of a sister, a fixation with a domestic domicile with a strong sense of family, and creative tendencies of two psychotic shut-ins and their obsession of The Wizard of Oz that would have made its creator L. Frank Baum bewildered. This strange but engaging film has shades of Misery in terms of abduction and a tinge of Lean’s Great Expectations spiked with Haneke’s Funny Games in terms of creepy and demented containment.
Dealing with this current situation of isolation, Rock, Paper and Scissors provides a window into a possible scenario into how being housebound could drive a pair to insanity and a family could dive into a hellish landscape of sadism and delusion with plenty of WTF moments to spare.
This three-character cast may be small, but it’s mighty. Augustina Cerviño is terrific as the prodigal sister and successful actress returning to the fold in dealing with her dead father’s affairs turned victim at the hands of her own brother and sister. Her emotional range from desperate pleading to burning anger is fitting given her situation. Pablo Sigal is excellent as the unbalanced Jesús. His cold manipulation that turns mocking toward his captive sister Magdalena makes his performance a subtle blend of the odd and the unsettling. Valeria Giorcelli is terrifying as María José with her need to keep the rest of the family together at the expense of imprisoning Magdalena along with her possessive and unnatural fetish of Dorothy from the Oz film, makes her performance and insane and sadistic one.
If you enjoy messed up movies (and who doesn’t) that are contained to the point of extreme claustrophobia, then this flick is for you but be warned, the dread is strong with this one.