Review of Cracks (2009) by Jeff H — 15 Mar 2011

My 500th Review!!!

Cracks is the surprisingly solid film from first-time feature film director Jordan Scott, who is the daughter of three-time Academy Award nominated director Ridley Scott (Thelma & Louise, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down). The film is set in the British countryside at a remote, un-named girl's boarding school and it is attended by a highly select group of girls. The elite, most highly-envied girls at the school belong to the school's diving team that is headed/coached by Miss G (Eva Green - Casino Royale, The Golden Compass, The Dreamers). The girls are a tight-knit group of girls who have each others' backs and idolize their very-own Miss G. The group is "led" by a hoity-toity diva named Di (Juno Temple - Atonement, Glorious 39, Notes on a Scandal) who quickly asserts her position towards a new girl who arrives at the school via Span. Fiamma (Maria Valverde) proves to be a diving natural and quickly becomes Miss G's new "favorite" much to the chagrin of the other girls; but Fiamma doesn't want the role and quickly discovers that the idolized Miss G is nothing more than a melodramatic liar who's life stories are simply re-creations from other author's fictional accounts of life around the world. This is a story about young, teenaged girls and so jealousy, petty infighting, hatred, lying, hair-pulling and pitted rivalries all come to the surface. Eva Green plays a deceitful and wickedly fragile being who's grasp on reality and control of those around her veers dangerously close to a dangerous presipice. The story has some predictable elements (when some plot points are first introduced we know they'll come into play later in the film) but the story is compelling enough to keep one's interest. The cinematography is grand and the color-scheme Scott employs conveys a disillusioned mood. The young girls are played by some of Britian's hottest young talent as Temple and Imogen Poots (Jane Eyre, Solitary Man, Fright Night) play the domineering, bullying teenagers perfectly. Green gives us a new glimpse of her talent that audiences have not seen before and it is wildly unsettling. The film is atmospheric and erotic and Scott shows some promise. That the film treads on such familar territory but still comes across as fresh, tantilizing and austere says something. The girls' world appears to be solid until the first of many Cracks begin to appear and then the shattered pieces become dangerous shards of sharp glass that can cut through anything -- lies and deceptions, percieved reality, fear, infatuation -- like a knife.