Review of Heavenly Creatures (1994) by Gg J — 07 Jun 2009

?Heavenly Creatures? is a cinematic gift from God. OK, skip that, Satan. In this 1994 true-life drama, director Peter Jackson introduces Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey as two awkward, lonely teenagers who meet in early 1950s New Zealand and become the best of friends. Too close, that is.

The girls have ripe imaginations and create their own Tolkien-like world of fantasy, kings and queens, and ribald wild sex, and that world spills out of their mind into reality. The twisted result: The girls commit matricide with a brick, wrapped in a stocking.

The film is a fascinating biographical tale of these 1950s teens in a 1950s (false) sweet world, and it?s also a hellish ride inside their obviously mentally warped minds. The screenplay uses actual words from the diary of one of the girls, an outcast at school who is statutory raped by a tenant of her parents.

Winslet and Lewinsky spin gold with their parts, heart-breaking and horrifying, they show absolute happy delirium and the most savage violence, all exploded by raging hormones indignation of having no control over their lives. Jackson proved himself a genius here.