Midnight margaritas, a rambling house on a New England island, and two aunts who open the door to any woman with a love problem. The Owens women have practiced magic for generations, and the town has never stopped talking about it.

Sally (Sandra Bullock) wants an ordinary life: a garden, a shop, daughters nobody teases at school. Gillian (Nicole Kidman) wants heat and motion and someone new every season. Orphaned young by the curse that runs in the family, both were raised by their aunts Frances and Jet (Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest) on cooking, charms, and the household rule that any man an Owens woman loves comes to a bad end. Years later Gillian takes up with Jimmy Angelov (Goran Višnjić), the sort of man you need your aunts for, and a lawman from out of state (Aidan Quinn) turns up with questions.

Griffin Dunne shoots it warm and loose, more autumn kitchen than haunted house. It slides between romantic comedy, sister drama and something with teeth, and Bullock and Kidman play the two as people who can irritate each other the way only siblings manage. Alice Hoffman's 1995 novel supplies the bones; the film trades some of her interiority for weather, candles, herbs and a soundtrack that knows its job. Watch it in October, lights low, with someone you can talk over the slow parts with.