I’ve wanted to watch this since reading Peter Jackson’s biography – just knowing some of the backstory to this film even being made really added something.

But just on the film itself, it works rather beautifully, imo. There is something a bit bleak about the atmosphere of the times, definitely something repressed. And in this environment, one naive schoolgirl falls in love with the imagination of another, and the pair create their own world – one which starts to consume them. However the real problems seem to come from over reactions of concerned parents…

I really loved the way the filmmakers handled the imaginary world: the girls have – in amazing detail! – sculpted the characters of their novel/world in clay, and thus when we segue into the dream-like sequences, we find them populated by those same clay creations; just, lifesize and mobile. It’s a great effect, without being a huge ‘FX’.

Obviously there’s a harsh end – we get a glimpse at the beginning, which is good as there’s no point pretending we don’t already know how this story ends (it’s based on true events, after all). The mood as that ending approaches is genuinely hair-on-end, not for being overtly horrific, but rather for being so calm and spacy.

Lovely period footage of Christchurch, NZ at the beginning.

“The riverbank is cool and green. A quiet haven from the bustle of the city.”

“Every city street is flat, so there are bicycles everywhere. This is a city of cycling.”

“There are thousands of them, and only Copenhagen is said to boast more bicycles.”

One of my friends was in this :-) She was in the front row in the typing class scene. She also tells me she had a line, but it ended up on the cutting room floor

Heavenly Creatures is a harrowing story that was the first film I saw by Peter Jackson and also was Kate Winslet’s cinematic debut. Visually it’s inventive and the editing is great as well. It becomes increasingly tense as it moves to the end and the circular structure lets you know that something terrible is about to happen. Great filmmaking with a fascinating combination of music and special effects that somehow fit into the story.