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Motivations butno excuses: filmREVIEW: ‘Heavenly Creatures’ is a provoc ative aIIengrossing tale of a famous NewZealand crime.»By HENRY SHEEHANThe Orange County RegisterThe Parker-Hulme affair is as well-known in New Zealand, and in the same way, as the Leopold and Loeb case is in the United States. So any movie based on the case cannot play hide-and-seek with its climax; too many people know it involves a murder.“Heavenly Creatures/' then,from New Zealand writer-direc-tor Peter Jackson, moves along different tracks from the normal crime thriller. Rather than deal with crime and punishment, it concerns itself solely with motives and states of mind, specifically those of dowdy Pauline Parker and sophisticated Juliet Hulme, who one sunny day in 1954 committed matricide with a blunt object.The result is an insistently intriguing film imbued with the ambiguities that haunt the experience of its two young subjects. Although shot with stylistic fervor, its tone is at once evenhanded and calm. The film injects itself directly into the fantasy life that the girls created and were — according to the film—ultimately engulfed by but is itself never overcome.And the film never confuses explanations with excuses. This must be one of the most humane films ever made about a blood crime.Pauline and Juliet's friendship was clearly proof that opposites'Heavenly Creatures'► Stars: Melanie Lynskey, Kate Winslet Sarah Peirse► Behind the scenes: Directed by Peter Jackson. Written by Jackson and Frances Walsh. Produced by Jim Booth.*► Maying: Opens today at Edwards South Coast Village.► Rating: R for violence and some sexuality.► Grade: A► Running time: 1 hour 39 minutesattract. The plump, somewhat sloppy daughter of lower-middle-class parents, Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) was distinguishing herself at Christchurch Girls’ High School mostly by an encroaching moody resentfulness when she first met Juliet (Kate Winslet). The daughter of upper-class parents, whose father had just been imported from England to head a local college, Juliet lost no time in establishing her dominion over her teachers, correcting her French instructor’s pronunciation and vocabulary on her first day.But Juliet, despite her outward poshness, was a lonely child. Tubercular, she often was left alone for months at a time in the care of relatives or paid help while her emotionally distant parents went on extended trips. Her father (Clive Merrison) seemed incapable of expressing any kind of affection, while her wqrmer mother (Diana Kent) reserved most of her demonstrativeness for her infidelities.The two unlikely friends were soon plunging into a world of fantasy, egged on by mutual taste, especially a preference for the arias of Mario Lanza. Although his robust singing is regarded as kitschy in most contemporary circles, the unrestrained emo-'HEAVENLY CREATURES': The close bond between two girls from different backgrounds, played by Melanie Lynskey, left, and Kate Winslet, is central to a 1954 case of matricide and the movie based on it.tions clearly struck a chord with the girls, and Jackson achieves one of his best effects just showing them running through a field as Lanza blasts away on the soundtrack,Pauline and Juliet also collaborated on stories involving a mythical kingdom, Borovnia, where various kings, queens, knights and a particularly bloodthirsty prince acted out the duo’s frustrated desires. They molded plasticene figures of their characters, and in the film’s greatest stylistic flourish, we see the two play out their fantastic, romantic and horrific vignettes with life-size versions of the thick, gray models.Jackson and co-writer Frances Walsh play the sexual card with great care. Although the girls displayed an obvious sexual imagination and enjoyed moments of physical intimacy, the strands are not entwined. According to “Heavenly Creatures,” they have a deeply romantic friendship, not a sexualobsession.When Juliet is confined to a sanitarium after a flare-up of her tuberculosis, the depth of the friendship becomes distressingly clear to both sets of parents and they plan to break it up. Pauline, in flight from a deadeningly dull life, and Juliet, from luxurious indifference, panic like birds about to get their wings clipped.Although Jackson has laid out a case for the defense, he doesn’t do so by vilifying the victims. Juliet’s father is as close to a villain as we get. Even her mother gets to offer explanations.But the movie’s deepest, sympathies, aside from those for Pauline and Juliet, are for Pauline’s mother, Honora. Honestly loving, she can’t quite put her finger on what’s wrong with her daughter — or what she should do about it. But love spurs her oninto a dilemma as heartbreaking as it is risky.Jackson, who employs a swirling camera, always uses it to shift point of view within the ongoing action of a scene. That technique is never more acute than when it shows the sad, troubled faces of mother and daughter, each averted from the other.“Heavenly Creatures” is so full of fine performances it is almost unfair to pick one out. But given the difficulty of her character, the few emotive instruments at hand, and her lack of experience, Lynskey deserves exceptional credit.As a kind of postscript, it turned out after the movie was in production that Juliet was alive and writing mystery novels in England under the name Ann Perry. Pauline’s whereabouts are unknown. After seeing the movie, it’s impossible not to wish them both whatever peace they could possibly achieve.r * *
Newspaper Details
Santa Ana Orange County Register
Santa Ana, California, US
Wed, Nov 23, 1994
Page 324
Full Page
Clipped by
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USA 07 Mar 2023
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