REVIEW: Cracks (2009)
Dec. 7th, 2009 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllCracks (2009) (rated 15)
Directed by: Jordan Scott
Written by: Ben Court and Caroline Ip
Starring: Eva Green, Juno Temple, Maria Valverde, Imogen Poots
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1183665/
I went to see this film because it's film set in a girls' boarding school (which isn't St Trinian's). It's 1934 at St Mathilde's School on an island, somewhere in England. The girls of the close-knit diving team, who share a dormitory and table, are told they are going to be joined by a new girl, a Spanish aristorcrat. They are not impressed. And of course, when Fiamma arrives, she upsets the balance.
This is not at all so far so St Clare's or wherever. In fact, it's best to get over the 'This wouldn't happen at the Chalet School' very quickly, although impossible to stop the guffaw when a mistress bemoans that they've never had anything like this happen when a girl seems to run away. As the trailer suggests, it's a claustophobic tale about female sexuality, hysteria, coming of age and power struggles. It also reminded me that I like my school stories with a beginning of term, a middle of term (a half term holiday or adventure) and an end of term. This doesn't fit into that mould. Some of the actresses playing the younger girls wouldn't be allowed to see it.
I'm not sure what the film is trying to be, really. It's trying to be grittier than the girls boarding school story for girls, or addressed towards adults, but you couldn't call it more realistic. In fact, it's more powerful moments are wordless shots of the girls diving, swimming, dancing or moving like a phalanx.
Di Radford is the team captain, and something of a bitch, but she's unquestionably the leader of the team, the one who sets the standard, as her adored Miss G says. Miss G is all cool sophistication at first (and marvellously dressed throughout). She urges the girls to be free, allows them illicit indulgences and gets their unquestioned trust and adoration. The arrival of Fiamma, who has lived more than these cloistered girls, having travelled, read more widely than merely Romantic poets and got herself a boyfriend, beautiful and never more so when she dives from on high...well, Di is no longer Miss G's favourite. But Fiamma (the most sympathetic character) doesn't want Miss G's 'friendship'. However, her every attempt to make friends with the hostile dorm gets thwarted, often nastily so, ending in a midnight feast gone very wrong.
I tried to inject some intrigue there, but the film doesn't manage it. It's apparent from early on that, apart from the erotic frisson of lively young girls with a pash on a glamorous teacher who sits and watches as they dive, framed in the sky, gives them gifts, stories and attentions like midnight dips...Miss G is unhinged. She's a fantasist, untrustworthy (and the headmistress seems to know this but has put her in charge of a diving team, where more than once her lack of wisdom puts asthmatic Fiamma in danger, but all she gets is a lecture about not giving the girls a sense of proportion). You can tell how things will go from even before the film flirts with and foreshadows it. Apart from Fiamma and perhaps the littlest girl and perhaps Fuzzy (Persephone) the girls aren't that sympathetic. They're a clique, in that clique they're bullies, with Di their leader by force of personality more than anything. Oh, they're innocent too, in a way, but what did they think was going to happen when six turned on one? THrowing stones at someone and hitting them isn't a game.
It does all go very hysterical and melodramatic and pandering a little towards the end. There are some accidental guffaws, but it's so rare to see this type of film and the look and the atmosphere are gripping. I don't love Eva Green as an actress and I thought she overplayed her cards, but the three main girls are a young Felicity Kendall, a young Kate Winslet and a young Penelope Cruz.
Directed by: Jordan Scott
Written by: Ben Court and Caroline Ip
Starring: Eva Green, Juno Temple, Maria Valverde, Imogen Poots
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1183665/
I went to see this film because it's film set in a girls' boarding school (which isn't St Trinian's). It's 1934 at St Mathilde's School on an island, somewhere in England. The girls of the close-knit diving team, who share a dormitory and table, are told they are going to be joined by a new girl, a Spanish aristorcrat. They are not impressed. And of course, when Fiamma arrives, she upsets the balance.
This is not at all so far so St Clare's or wherever. In fact, it's best to get over the 'This wouldn't happen at the Chalet School' very quickly, although impossible to stop the guffaw when a mistress bemoans that they've never had anything like this happen when a girl seems to run away. As the trailer suggests, it's a claustophobic tale about female sexuality, hysteria, coming of age and power struggles. It also reminded me that I like my school stories with a beginning of term, a middle of term (a half term holiday or adventure) and an end of term. This doesn't fit into that mould. Some of the actresses playing the younger girls wouldn't be allowed to see it.
I'm not sure what the film is trying to be, really. It's trying to be grittier than the girls boarding school story for girls, or addressed towards adults, but you couldn't call it more realistic. In fact, it's more powerful moments are wordless shots of the girls diving, swimming, dancing or moving like a phalanx.
Di Radford is the team captain, and something of a bitch, but she's unquestionably the leader of the team, the one who sets the standard, as her adored Miss G says. Miss G is all cool sophistication at first (and marvellously dressed throughout). She urges the girls to be free, allows them illicit indulgences and gets their unquestioned trust and adoration. The arrival of Fiamma, who has lived more than these cloistered girls, having travelled, read more widely than merely Romantic poets and got herself a boyfriend, beautiful and never more so when she dives from on high...well, Di is no longer Miss G's favourite. But Fiamma (the most sympathetic character) doesn't want Miss G's 'friendship'. However, her every attempt to make friends with the hostile dorm gets thwarted, often nastily so, ending in a midnight feast gone very wrong.
I tried to inject some intrigue there, but the film doesn't manage it. It's apparent from early on that, apart from the erotic frisson of lively young girls with a pash on a glamorous teacher who sits and watches as they dive, framed in the sky, gives them gifts, stories and attentions like midnight dips...Miss G is unhinged. She's a fantasist, untrustworthy (and the headmistress seems to know this but has put her in charge of a diving team, where more than once her lack of wisdom puts asthmatic Fiamma in danger, but all she gets is a lecture about not giving the girls a sense of proportion). You can tell how things will go from even before the film flirts with and foreshadows it. Apart from Fiamma and perhaps the littlest girl and perhaps Fuzzy (Persephone) the girls aren't that sympathetic. They're a clique, in that clique they're bullies, with Di their leader by force of personality more than anything. Oh, they're innocent too, in a way, but what did they think was going to happen when six turned on one? THrowing stones at someone and hitting them isn't a game.
It does all go very hysterical and melodramatic and pandering a little towards the end. There are some accidental guffaws, but it's so rare to see this type of film and the look and the atmosphere are gripping. I don't love Eva Green as an actress and I thought she overplayed her cards, but the three main girls are a young Felicity Kendall, a young Kate Winslet and a young Penelope Cruz.
