Heavenly Creatures (1994)

They did a parody of Heavenly Creatures on The Simpsons. It wasn't a very good one, but then, the movie parodies tend not to be. A few years back, however, it did me the enormous favour of convincing me to set aside my pathological fear of Claymation for long enough to give the real thing a shot.

In truth, I'd been trying to pluck up the nerve for years. I've always had a sort of guilty love for true crime stories - the more lurid, the better - but every time I thought I could do it I'd have a flashback to the closing sequences of W** F***** R**** R*****. Eventually, I came to the depressing realization that all the best films would remain eternally reserved for other, braver souls; souls, in other words, who didn't curl up sobbing in terror at the sight of an innocent ball of plasticene.


...Where was I? Heavenly Creatures, that was it. It's an interesting film for any number of reasons, marking as it did the cinematic debut of one Kate Winslet. Its credentials as a true story are also impeccable; however implausible it might sound, this tale of two teenage girls whose friendship spirals into dangerous obsession is absolutely true. All it took was for director Peter Jackson to dramatize events, and to either create a same-sex attraction between the pair of them or make it explicit - the real Juliet Hulme and Pauline Rieper have denied this, but the 1950s were far more inhibited times, socially speaking, and I'd be prepared to believe that much went unacknowledged.

The good

It took me a little while to warm to this one, I'll admit - in the two lead roles, Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey give mannered, exaggerated performances, and Winslet in particular really grated in the first instance. However, as the film drew on, I realized that this was just a representation of the torrid, overly-intense nature of their friendship. Any time the pair appear on screen, we find ourselves tugged into their hypersaturated, overheated world, where bizarre camera angles and exposures turn the most innocuous individuals into noble heroes or, more likely, dangerous villains. As the chubbier, more sullen Pauline, Lynskey is a joy to behold, turning simmering and glowering into veritable artforms in their own right.

What I love the most about Heavenly Creatures, however, is the way in which it represents Peter Jackson's personal career sweet spot. Oh, I know a lot of people loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I'll even concede, grudgingly, that some of that love might have been justified - if nothing else, I can't think of anything better to sleep through on a cold winter's evening. Others rave about his earlier works, but while Meet the Feebles has been on my must-watch list now for nearly half my life, low-budget horror's never really been my sort of thing. Heavenly Creatures, however, forms a gorgeous midpoint between the two distinct styles, visually smooth and lush while retaining the bravery and bizarreness of his earlier works.

The bad

...I need to stop using this blog as a place to talk up my favourite films. Cinematically, I think this is another gem, and I can't find much objectively wrong with it. I could say it was a little bit arthouse, perhaps, but I really hate using that word in a pejorative sense.

Basically, it's just a really, really fantastic movie.

The verdict

The least guilty pleasure on my guilty pleasures list, Heavenly Creatures offers cheap thrills in environmentally friendly packaging, treating its young protagonists with understanding and respect even as it forces us to recoil in horror at the havoc they eventually wreak.