I always remember the margaritas before I remember the murder. That probably says something about Practical Magic, a film in which disposing of a body somehow shares space with the kitchen of your dreams. The house helps. So does the soundtrack. Mostly, though, it comes down to Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman looking as if they have spent their entire lives getting into trouble together.

Watch Sally and Gillian when they’re having fun. There’s a particular silliness people slip into around a sibling, even after years of behaving like perfectly respectable adults elsewhere. One look and you’re back in the bedroom you shared as children. The midnight margaritas scene catches that feeling beautifully.

It also gives us a glimpse of the sisters with the pressure briefly lifted. They spend so much of the film worrying about love or dealing with its consequences. Getting to see them enjoy each other matters. You understand what they’re trying to get back to.

Sally Has Worked Very Hard to Be Ordinary

There’s something touching about how much Sally wants the life other people take for granted. A husband. Children. The ability to go into town without the family name arriving ahead of her.

Growing up Owens means being watched and talked about. Sally carries that discomfort into adulthood. Sandra Bullock is good at suggesting the effort involved in keeping herself composed, particularly when everything around her invites panic. Sally often looks as though she has already dealt with six problems today and would appreciate everyone behaving sensibly for ten minutes.

Naturally, she has Gillian for a sister.

Gillian’s response to their childhood is to leave. She wants experience and excitement. Nicole Kidman gives her the confidence of someone who can walk into a room and immediately find something interesting to do, though that confidence becomes much less reliable once she’s hurt.

It would be easy to turn their differences into a little moral lesson about responsibility. The film gives both women enough unhappiness to complicate that. Sally’s careful choices leave her vulnerable too. Gillian’s appetite for life is appealing even when you wish she would be more careful about whom she lets into it.

I like both of them more because the film allows that awkwardness. You can understand your sister’s choices and still find them exhausting.

They Know How to Get Under Each Other’s Skin

Bullock and Kidman have the sort of chemistry that makes a family history feel present without anyone having to explain it.

Sally can sound like she’s assuming responsibility before Gillian has agreed that she needs supervising. Gillian has a way of pushing against that which feels very familiar if you’ve ever returned home and discovered your family still considers you the person you were at seventeen.

Their old roles are waiting for them. They fall straight in.

That can be funny, especially when the situation calls for a degree of competence neither woman currently possesses. There’s a body to deal with and they’re still sisters. Fear makes them impatient. Someone’s tone becomes an issue at an exceptionally inconvenient moment.

The performances leave room for this petty stuff. I’m grateful for it. Stories about close sisters can get so busy celebrating the bond that the actual experience of having one disappears beneath affectionate speeches.

Gillian Knows Who to Call

The Jimmy Angelov storyline is uglier than the film’s cosy reputation sometimes allows. Gillian is in an abusive relationship. Her usual confidence offers very little protection, and the danger follows her into the place where she should feel safest.

When she reaches for Sally, Sally comes.

That simple response does a great deal of emotional work. Gillian has left home and made a life elsewhere. She has made choices Sally might question. She still knows there is someone she can call.

Sally may be anxious or angry. She may have opinions about how Gillian ended up here. But her sister needs help now, and that urgency takes over.

There’s real tenderness in allowing Gillian to be rescued while she’s a mess. She gets to need someone before she has worked out what happened to her or what she should do next. Plenty of people find asking for help difficult precisely because they think an explanation has to come first.

Of course, the sisters’ attempts to handle Jimmy become a spectacular disaster. This is Practical Magic. A bad evening can always acquire another supernatural complication.

What stays convincing through all of it is Sally’s involvement. You can see how love gets her into the room, then how fear keeps her making decisions long after she has run out of good ones. Bullock lets that practical exterior fray. Being the sensible sister is a heavy assignment when you’re terrified too.

Sally Already Has Someone She’s Afraid to Lose

Sally’s childhood spell for an impossible man is such a lovely, sad little idea. She gives him unlikely qualities so she can protect herself from ever falling in love. Even as a girl, she’s trying to find a workable arrangement with grief.

The romantic story grows from that wish. But watching the film again, I’m struck by how thoroughly Gillian has already defeated Sally’s hopes of keeping her heart safe.

Gillian can leave town. She can choose a man Sally distrusts. She can disappear into a life Sally has very little control over. Sally loves her through all of it.

There’s no clever childhood spell for that problem.

This gives the sisters’ relationship a pull that runs beneath the romance. Sally wants security so badly, yet one of the most important people in her life is someone she could never organize into being safe. Anyone who has worried about a sibling will recognize the frustration. You can offer advice until you’re hoarse. Eventually they leave the house and you have to let them.

By the time Jimmy’s spirit threatens Gillian, that fear has become horribly literal. Sally is trying to reach her sister while something else takes hold of her.

Leave Room for Your Sister

The women who gather to help Gillian make the ending feel generous. Sally has spent years wanting acceptance from the town, and now help arrives at the house. There’s something moving about seeing that distance finally close.

At the centre of the scene, though, Sally is still trying to get her sister back.

That’s what I carry away from the film. Along with an unreasonable interest in the kitchen, obviously.

Sally and Gillian will probably continue to annoy each other. I can imagine Sally offering advice Gillian never requested. Gillian would take one look at Sally’s worried face and make a joke at exactly the wrong time. A happy ending leaves plenty of room for another argument.

It also leaves them somewhere to return to. Gillian can come through the door after things have gone wrong. Sally can admit she’s struggling to hold everything together. There’s another woman in that house who remembers the frightened little girl each of them used to be.

Sometimes she’ll know what to say. Other nights she’ll get the blender out.