The Ladies

The two elderly sisters Mimi and Vali live and work in a cramped apartment. After the two Hungarian immigrants, now 87 and 93 years old, had to shut down their dress store on Lexington Avenue, they moved their operation into their home. Their apartment is jam-packed with rolls of fabric, sewing machines and trays of haberdashery. The two stooping women in floral dresses still work more than 40 hours a week, but times have changed. "The customers are getting old, too," Mimi says in broken English. "One customer, we made her at least 10 dresses a year. It was three years ago she had a stroke. Now she's in a chair at home and don't need dresses no more." The sisters may work together, but they grumble at each other for hours on end. "I have wrinkles, I am old, my mind is not. But Vali's mind is getting old," Mimi adds maliciously. But according to Vali, "Mimi needs too much attention. If I´m not there, she doesn´t take her medicine, she doesn't go to the doctor. She'd have died a long time ago." In only a few minutes, director Christina Voros manages to tell this remarkable history, expose the origin of their ill will and delve deeply into the characters of these two special women.