'Creatures' grants insight into true story of lust, murder

By TODD RITTER
Collegian Arts Writer

Heavenly Creatures begins with a 1950s tourist film of New Zealand. Complete with formal narration and schmaltzy department store music, the film shows clean-cut men and women enjoying the sights. The film then cuts to two girls, running through the forest, bleeding and screaming like savages.

"It's mummy," one of them yells to a startled stranger. "Something terrible has happened."

Heavenly Creatures tells the true story of two girls, Juliet Hulme and Pauline Reiper who, in 1954, killed Pauline's mother. It explores the dynamics of their friendship while at the same time chronicling their downward spiral into madness and the events leading up to their fateful decision to commit murder.

The film lifts the golden veneer of the 1950s and small-town life to show what lurks beneath the facade of innocence. It's as if director Peter Jackson has picked up a rock and exposed all the slimy, horrible things that are crawling around underneath it.

This theme has been explored before, most notably in David Lynch's television series "Twin Peaks," but never in this way. The film is audacious, expertly walking the dangerous tightrope between drama, comedy, mystery, horror and fantasy.

Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) is bored and disgruntled, an outcast at her all-girls school. Then Juliet (Kate Winslet) comes along. Juliet has the face of an angel, but the devil coursing through her veins.

The two misfits meet and enter a close friendship fueled by their passion for singer Mario Lanza and their galloping imaginations. They write volumes of stories about a make-believe empire ruled completely by them. Soon, as their friendship and their insanity grows stronger, they enter what they refer to as the "fourth world," a place of pure imagination where they are free.

The film alternates between the girls in this fourth world, where they enter into a lesbian relationship, and their parents' attempts to split them up -- an act the girls do not take lightly. It is then they decide that the main thing standing in their way is Pauline's mother.

As director, New Zealand's Jackson gives a virtuoso performance. He shows extreme skill in handling the film's delicate subject matter, but never once fails to be outlandishly bold.

What is even more amazing is that his direction is never noticeable. The girls, it seems, direct the film, pulling it along with the sheer strength of their imaginations. The camera is in their heads, spinning kinetically, soaring over landscapes, real and imaginary.

The love affair between Pauline and Juliet is not exploited but portrayed with tenderness and romance. And the performances are astounding. The way Lynskey and Winslet play the girls, you can feel their closeness, their dependency upon one another and the pure terror at the thought of being separated.

When the murder occurs, a scene so tension-filled even the camera has the jitters, the viewer has sympathy for both the murderers and their victim. Jackson does not justify the crime. He acknowledges that the girls were insane and wisely stresses the fact that committing murder is what ultimately tore them apart.

Heavenly Creatures is a truly original work of art. Astonishing, shocking and amazingly photographed, it leaves the viewers speechless.

Featured on the poster are the words "Not all angels are innocent." After seeing Heavenly Creatures, one realizes, with a shudder, how very true that is.