I’ve always been a fan of ‘The Witches of Eastwick’, so it’s curious that I somehow missed ‘Practical Magic’ when it originally appeared at the end of the 1990s. Directed by Griffin Dunne – whom I particularly remember as the hapless computer operator whose life spirals spectacularly out of control during one night in Martin Scorsese’s ‘After Hours’ – this is another story about ordinary life colliding with the fantastical. And while ‘Practical Magic’ ostensibly presents itself as a supernatural romantic comedy, there are some surprisingly dark things going on beneath its whimsical surface.

Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman play Sally and Gillian Owens, sisters descended from a long line of witches and raised by their wonderfully eccentric aunts. They possess genuine magical abilities, but their family also lives under a curse: any man with whom an Owens woman genuinely falls in love is destined to meet a premature death.

That creates an intriguing contradiction at the heart of the film. Romantic love is something these women desire, but achieving it potentially means destroying the person they love. Bullock’s Sally eventually finds what appears to be the perfect husband and family life, only for the curse inevitably to intervene. Kidman’s Gillian, meanwhile, is the wild child, drifting from relationship to relationship until she becomes involved with the violent and controlling Jimmy.

There is a dark irony here. Jimmy survives precisely because Gillian cannot genuinely love him. The apparently perfect man is killed by the family curse, while the abusive man remains alive until the women themselves intervene.

And intervene they certainly do.

This is where ‘Practical Magic’ becomes rather more interesting than the fluffy romantic fantasy it sometimes appears to be. Jimmy’s domestic abuse eventually results in the sisters killing him – accidentally at first, although subsequent events become considerably more complicated – and then attempting to use magic to bring him back. Inevitably, this goes disastrously wrong. Jimmy returns as a malevolent supernatural presence and ultimately possesses Gillian herself.

There are shades of ‘Thelma & Louise’ in the relationship between the sisters. Sally and Gillian may have radically different personalities and approaches to life, but when one of them is threatened, the other instinctively comes to her defence. A man who abuses one sister effectively takes on both of them. Domestic violence is therefore met first with sisterly resistance and eventually with something approaching supernatural retribution.

For a film accessible to younger viewers, some of this is surprisingly gruesome and disturbing. Jimmy isn’t merely a pantomime villain: the threat he represents is rooted in recognizable domestic abuse. The supernatural horror subsequently becomes an extension of that abuse because even after death he refuses to relinquish control over Gillian. His possession of her literalizes something the film has already established psychologically – an abusive partner continuing to inhabit and dominate the life of his victim.

That makes the climactic exorcism particularly interesting.

Throughout the film, the Owens women have been regarded suspiciously by the inhabitants of their small American town. Their neighbours, particularly the other women, regard their occult practices as something strange and potentially threatening. Yet when Gillian needs rescuing, those same women are summoned to the Owens house and invited to participate in the magical ritual required to save her.

Suddenly the outsiders become a community.

By the end, the local women seem positively delighted to have been inducted into the world they previously regarded with suspicion. Witchcraft ceases to represent something dangerous existing on the margins of respectable society and instead becomes a means through which women support and protect one another. The real magic, the film seems to suggest, isn’t simply spells and potions but solidarity.

In that sense, ‘Practical Magic’ is really a lesson in sisterhood. The feminine bonds become stronger precisely because of the threats directed against them. Sally and Gillian are joined not only by their aunts but eventually by an entire community of women, and the curse that has haunted generations of the Owens family can only finally be confronted collectively.

Tonally, however, the film is all over the place. It is simultaneously a romance, supernatural horror story, feminist fable, comedy, family drama and romcom. At one moment we’re watching eccentric witches preparing potions; at another we’re dealing with bereavement, domestic violence, murder or demonic possession. Nicole Kidman is levitating above a bed while possessed by the spirit of the abusive man the sisters have killed, yet the film somehow still wants to retain the atmosphere of a warm romantic comedy.

Perhaps that strange mixture explains why ‘Practical Magic’ has endured. It doesn’t fit comfortably into any single genre because its central concern isn’t really witchcraft at all. It’s about women who have inherited both extraordinary powers and an equally extraordinary burden, gradually discovering that neither romantic love nor individual independence is sufficient on its own.

The curse tells the Owens women that loving somebody means eventually losing them. The film’s answer is that there is another kind of love that proves considerably harder to destroy: the bond between sisters, family and ultimately a community of women prepared to form a circle around somebody who needs saving.

The magic may be supernatural, but the solidarity is intensely practical.