Heavenly Creatures: too close for comfort REVIEW

So Heavenly Creatures is a 1994 "based on true life" drama directed and co written by the lovely Sir Peter Jackson (yep LOTR guy), and it is amazingly morbidly beautiful.

Melanie Lynsky and Kate Winslet play Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme two girls at the same school who form an incredibly tight friendship and soon alienate all those around them. They form a fierce bond and create a magical world inside their heads. When Juliet contracts tuberculosis and is taken to a hospital and her parents decide to leave on a trip, Pauline sends letters (love letters as a fictional king to his empress and as herself). It seems innocuous, loveable and really quite interesting at first.

Pauline ends up with a lovely young man and then gets rid of him to spend more time with Juliet until  a point where they become so close the parents start to worry. After much deliberation they are separated and Pauline is seen being taken to a therapist to cure her homosexuality and told all girls grow out of it. However the love affair continues to a point that as Juliet is about to be taken away her mother lets them spend a final week together.

And thats where it goes horribly wrong. Pauline decided to kill her mother, it spirals out of control and some how it does it with such grace. Such prettiness that you wouldn't notice except they are covered in blood and screaming.

This should be a horrific film, its story is horrible and twisted and yet it is beautiful. The fantasy worlds are beautiful and it serves as a beautiful contrast.

Sir Peter really has talent i'll give him that :)

FURTHER READING

this fantastic article psychoanalysing the girls in the film HERE