Netflix Argentina release, (Un)lucky Sisters, as the title suggests, revolves around two sisters who met each other for the first time when their father passed away. Jesica’s life was completely chaotic, and the need to make money always kept her on her toes. She could barely breathe in her cramped apartment, where her mother held classes for pregnant women. Her adoptive father and brother occupied the other rooms, and she often found herself locked in the bathroom to collect her thoughts. Jesi was at the point where she would do anything to find a way out of her imperfect existence, but she did not expect her life to drastically change after an unexpected phone call.
Spoiler Alert
What brought Angela and Jesica together?
Jesica received a call informing her that her father had passed away and she had to identify his body at the morgue. She met her stepsister Angela there. While Jesica was indifferent to the news, Angela reminisced about the last conversation she had with her father. Surprisingly, both the girls stated that they did not remember what their father looked like, thereby hinting at the fact they were never close to him. Thankfully, the deceased man’s secretary stepped in and confirmed that the body was of Ernesto Alejandro Di Pace. The private secretary, Inesita Alvarez Ballesta, was the girls’ only hope in learning more about their late father. She told them how disappointed he was with the false accusations made against him. Di Pace was accused of bribery in the Osterfil case, and according to Inesita that took a toll on him. When Angela learned that her father was a generous man, she regretted not knowing him well. Angela felt a sense of comfort when Inesita mentioned that when she was a little girl, she and her father took a trip to Brazil, and they spent an entire day together, swimming in the ocean and building sand castles on the beach. Angela barely had any recollection of the vacation, but she was happy to find out that there was one day in her life that she got to spend with her father. Inesita went on to state that their father was a true patriot, and while Angela agreed with her statement, Jesica couldn’t care less, and without any hesitation, she asked Inesita if their father had left them anything valuable. Jesica was a little disheartened to find out that their father did not leave them anything in particular. But he did own an apartment in a posh neighborhood, and since Jesica and Angela were his only children, Inesita believed they would eventually inherit the property.
Why was Angela against spending their father’s money?
At their father’s funeral, Inesita introduced Jesica and Angela to mayors Omar Chichi and Ezequiel Barzenac. They were Di Pace’s close friends, hinting that Angela and Jesica’s father was an influential man with a certain political affiliation. Later, Inesita mentioned that their father was a facilitator, and her expression suggested that he was deep into shady business. Jesica did not care about her father’s occupation, but she was surprised when she walked into his luxurious apartment. This was better than anything Jesica had imagined the place would be, and she did not intend to leave. For the first time, Jesica had a place to relax, and she wanted to spend some time there. While the apartment for the moment belonged to the judiciary because of the legal case their father had gotten entangled in, Inesita was confident they would resolve the issue soon. While Jesi relaxed and took in the view of the city, Angela went through their father’s belongings and tried to understand him a little better. She came across a photograph of a little girl and a young man building sandcastles, and she realized this was the vacation Inesita had mentioned. Jesi tried to become friends with Angela, but she was not interested. She planned to sell the apartment as soon as they inherited it and split the money. She never considered Jesica her sister, and even after their father’s death, nothing had changed.
Everything in the apartment could be controlled by a tablet, and Angela entered the password Ernesto had written on a card. To their surprise, a secret door opened, and they found themselves standing in front of stacks of cash. Angela’s best guess was that their father had saved a lot of money, but according to Jesi, he was a corrupt man. Jesi wanted to split the cash and leave, but Angela suggested that they think it through. If it was illegal money, someone would come searching for it, and Angela was not ready to take the risk. The sisters agreed to return to the apartment the next day with a plan.
Why did Jesica run away with the money?
The girls did not know what to do with the money. While it would have been safe not to use it, they could not help but treat themselves a little. It started with dinner at a fine dining restaurant, and the next day they found themselves splurging some more cash at a shopping mall. Angela felt guilty and kept her spending to a minimum, but Jesica had no budget. Shopping together brought the sisters close, and Jesica ended up encouraging Angela to buy everything she wanted. Angela finally decided to let loose. Angela suspected that their father, as a ‘facilitator’, was involved in helping his friend Mr. Osterfil bribe the government for school construction. She was certain that the money did not belong to her father and that someday someone would come and threaten them to return the money. Just like Jesica, Angela too was tempted to use the money because it could change her life. She lived with her boyfriend at his grandma’s apartment. He looked forward to starting a family with her, but she was no longer in love with him. And she did not know how to tell him the truth. It was not just her personal life that was a mess, she also felt stuck in her job. She was a teacher’s aide at a kindergarten, and she knew that she would be fired sooner than later. She did not know how to deal with kids, and she had come to realize that she had a general dislike for children. Becoming a mother was not her dream, nor was handling a bunch of children to earn money. So, the cash they found at the apartment could help her start afresh. But she was too afraid to take the money.
Angela was terrified when her father’s neighbor, journalist Daniel Severino, stopped by their apartment and asked them whether their father had left him an ‘item’. The girls assumed he was asking for cash, and they somehow managed to dodge the threat. But the next day at school, Mayor Omar Chichi visited Angela, and he too was searching for an ‘item’ and he mentioned it was for his campaign. Angela pretended not to know what he was talking about, and the mayor suggested that he meet them at the apartment that very night to get the thing he was searching for. Angela assumed her father had left the money for the mayor; it was a bribe, and she warned Jesica not to touch the cash. Jesica pretended to agree with her sister, but the minute she went to the washroom, Jesica stuffed her bag with the money and left the apartment. Angela managed to find Jesica and warned her sister that she would be in trouble if the mayor found out. Jesica did not care, and she was ready to abandon her life and go somewhere far away. Angela was not prepared to leave; even though she wanted to, she felt guilty of prioritizing her happiness. But Angela was also afraid of the trouble Jesica would end up in, and she refused to let go of her sister. She had started to care for Jesica, and she thought it was her duty to protect her.
How was Angela’s idea of her father flawed?
(Un)lucky Sisters repeatedly highlights how differently Angela and Jesica remembered their father. Even though Angela barely had any memory of him, she had developed a romantic idea of who her father was, and she refused to face reality. She cherished the once-in-a-blue-moon phone calls, and she desperately wanted to believe that he cared about her and that she was an important part of his life. But in reality, her father was the reason for her depression when she was 13. His absence bothered her to the extent that she started to set fire to anything and everything, and she was nicknamed pyromaniac or Piru. She continued to carry a lighter in her pocket, and the temptation to set fire to the world around her was still there, but she had learned to control it. Living in denial was Angela’s way of coping with her reality, whereas Jesica had managed to face the truth. She considered her father nothing more than a disappointment. The only thing she had of him was his surname, and that was because her mother had sued him. Her father disappeared, leaving her and her mother broken. When Jesica and Angela tried to run away from the mayor and the journalist, Jesica confronted her sister about her flawed idea of their father. But Angela refused to acknowledge it. Jesica realized that Angela preferred being stuck with the wrong ideas and a life she hated instead of doing something about it. She filled her backpack with bundles of cash and left the trolley bag with the remaining money for Angela.
Who got the money?
Jesica tried to escape the police by getting on a ferry, but unfortunately, her plan backfired. When she was asked by security to pass her bag through the scanning machine, she refused. The guards ordered her to open her bag, and they arrested her as soon as they found all the cash in it. Meanwhile, Angela started to second-guess her decision. She missed having Jesica by her side, and she wondered if her sister was right about her insecurities. Jesica found herself fidgeting with her lighter, and she thought maybe it was time to face reality instead of living in her safe bubble. The photograph she had with her father was as meaningless to her as a random travel photo on a billboard. She did not feel any connection to the man in the picture and had no memory of the one day they had spent together. Jesica decided it was time to let go, and she burned the photograph. Almost immediately, she saw a police car taking her sister away, and she knew what she had to do now.
In (Un)lucky Sisters’ ending, Angela offered the bag full of cash to the policemen at the station where Jesica was locking up. The policemen were shocked at first, and they ultimately decided to turn off the surveillance cameras and accept it. Jesica did not expect Angela to come for her and give away all her money for her freedom. It was obvious that Angela did not care as much about the money as she did about her sister, and she would do anything to protect her. Funnily enough, as it turned out, the police were not after Jesica and Angela. They were searching for a missing feline that night, and the sisters assumed the police were trying to track them. When they returned to the apartment building, they found Inesita waiting with Omar Chichi. The girls realized they did not have much of a choice, and they had to face the consequences of their actions. After entering the apartment, Inesita walked upstairs and returned with a diary. As it turned out, the diary was the ‘item’ the mayor was after. When Inesita and Omar left, the girls celebrated. No one was after the money, and probably no one even knew about the secret chamber. The money belonged to the girls, and they decided to help their loved ones first. Angela handed Jesica’s mother the cash, pretending it to be a parcel from an anonymous source, and Jesica sent her backpack full of money to the kindergarten school where Angela taught. At the very end of the comedy-drama, we learn that the sisters now live together in a beach house. They were happy and living the life that they never dared to dream of. Even though their father had been a disappointment all their life, he ended up compensating for his absence, even if that might not have been his actual intention.
