Jordan Scott’s debut feature sends us all the way back to the 1930’s to an all girls boarding school in England and directly into the smoldering and, every so often, that every so slightly crazy stare of the girl’s favorite teacher Miss G (Eva Green). She swishes around the halls in her Hepburn-like silk trousers smoking cigarettes and filling the young ladies under her wing with stories of her own lusting after life, travels through India and that the feeling of desire is the most important thing in life.
The tightly knit group of teens naturally adore her, especially team captain Di (Juno Temple) and side kicks Lilly (Ellie Nunn) and Poppy (Imogen Poots) but when a new student, beautiful Spanish aristocrat daughter Fiamma (Maria Valverde) arrives the cracks in the group start to show. Fiamma’s money, looks and her lifestyle irks the girls and in the films main hook, the major spanner in the works comes, surprisingly, from the mysteriously lustful Miss G herself and Fiamma’s silver spoon fed lifestyle uncovers a few new truths about their beloved teacher and friend.
Scott’s film is refreshingly contemporary looking for a period drama. In playing a similar card to Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antonette (short of a pop soundtrack of course) it’s partly hand held feel is a breeze to watch and with daddy Ridley’s top gun cinematographer John Mathieson behind the camera it’s no wonder. With echoes of Picnic at Hanging Rock, an amazingly beautiful setting (the bulk of the film was shot in Ireland), some brilliant design and Eva Green wandering around, its not hard to picture how sumptuous it all is.
There are even little Malick like touches, a swan swims under a bridge and out of sight as Fiamma flees the grounds of the school and flowers bloom and are cut down as the tension between the girls and their mentor hits the skids. Mostly these succeed but the film sometimes seems too pithy for the endless slow motion diving and swimming shots to have any depth to them. Scott cut her teeth making commercials and sometimes her choices in lingering on beautiful girls and landscapes seems to be lacking any real purpose with regards to story.
But what a beautiful mistake to make.
The performances hold up well and Scott coxes some excellent moments out of her young cast. Juno Temple is excellent as the ex teachers pet pushed aside for the exotic newcomer. Valverde is equally great as the intelligent and tragic detached rich girl and arguably has the most difficult role being put though the psychological wringer by both her peers and Miss G as she tries to survive whilst not upsetting the pack. Green’s character’s prim demeanor is just as transparent as it needs to be for the film’s tension to work. She manages to keep Miss G interesting and all in all delivers a zig-zagging and quite rewarding performance which is let down in part by only by the films final “obvious where that was going” 20 minutes.
That small gripe aside Cracks does enough to make it stand out with a story that, in the reading, does nothing particularity new. Scott and her writers have turned Sheila Kohler’s innocence lost novel into a fairly interesting and definitely beautiful looking debut.
Phyllis Kane
2 months, 2 weeks ago
I enjoyed the moodiness hanging over the entire story. Although one might realize early on that something would happen as it did, that did not take away from the wonderful unsettling feeling. I loved the twisting of the hair and the looks passing from one adolescent young woman to the other. This is a great, delicious read. One of those books that you either take to or you don’t, and I did enjoy it. I think Sheila Koehler (sp?) is an innovative and dramatic writer, and I enjoy her writing; it keeps me awake and on my toes.