HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994)

Country: New Zealand / Germany

Genre(s): Crime / Drama

Director: Peter Jackson

Cast: Melanie Lynskey / Kate Winslet / Sarah Peirse

Plot

Based on the true story of two teenage girls who became obsessed with one another and the imaginary world they invented for themselves, and what happened when their parents tried to separate them.

What I Liked

There are a great many genres mixed into “Heavenly Creatures.”  Drama, crime story, romance, mystery thriller, dark comedy, coming-of-age, and fantasy are all deftly assembled by director Peter Jackson and his co-screenwriter Fran Walsh into this unique period piece that also happens to be based on a true story.  In order to successfully convey this story to the audience, Jackson and Walsh had to deal with the two complex characters at its heart.  That complexity requires not only going into the facts of what happened, but the family dynamics and personal histories of each character, the social conventions of the time and place, and the fantasies of these teenage girls.  Meanwhile they have to make their characters sufficiently real, fragile, and likeable and simultaneously entertain an audience.  Once you see the film, you’ll realize what a weighty task this would have been for the filmmakers.  Yet somehow this is all accomplished so well that the view doesn’t really notice all of the complexity until the film is over; the storytelling has a very natural flow, never seeming forced or disjointed.

It helps that the film is perfectly cast, with each actor embodying their role with precision.  Most important is that the two young protagonists are made sympathetic and interesting, a mission accomplished well by Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet.  Lynskey is Pauline, a brooding misfit to the extreme, complete with an outrageously exaggerated scowl.  Winslet is rich girl Juliet who appears daring on the surface but is soon revealed to be desperately fragile.  Surrounding them are the actors playing their parents, each making an important contribution by playing the parents not as they would see themselves but as they were seen through the eyes of their children.

What I Didn’t Like

I don’t have anything to put here.  I’m thinking hard here, but if the film has a flaw, I didn’t notice it.

Most Memorable Scene

I mentioned earlier that the story has a natural flow to it.  The seamless blends between reality and fantasy are particularly powerful.  My favorite might be when the girls, having just left the theater after a showing of “The Third Man,” are chased through the streets and Juliet’s home by a trench-coated Orson Welles, who appears in black & white.  The successful blending of fantasy elements into the everyday lives of the girls is largely thanks to Jackson’s subtle use of special effects.  He displays remarkable refinement for a man who to this point had been known for gruesome (and terrific) low-budget horror outings with titles like “Bad Taste” and “Dead Alive.”

My Rating: 4 out of 5