In the early 90s, “The Lord of the Rings” was just this strange cartoon by Ralph Bakshi, the most famous Kate was the “Chic” heroine “model Kate Moss, and director Kiwi Peter Jackson was really on the radar of Gorehounds thanks to his low -chip coloring colors as” bad taste “and” brain “. It all started to change with the arrival of “celestial creatures” in 1994, a drama of fantastic period on a true sensational but above all forgotten crime.
Distributed internationally under the Miramax banner (with the voice master “in a world”, Don Lafontaine, making his thing on the trailer), “Heavenly Creatures” was the first Jackson film that you could actually take your mom watching in the cinema. He also presented the world to two young unknown actresses, Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey, playing a pair of schoolgirls whose retreat in an imaginary world leads to obsession, mental alienation and murder.
“Heavenly Creatures” was a minor feeling that made decent money on a limited version and received positive opinions from criticism, with many end -of -year lists. The film also drew attention during festivals and on the award ceremony circuit, with Winslet receiving most of the applause for its eye -catching turn like Juliet Hulme, the more energetic half of the killer duo. Despite the buzz, the “celestial creatures” have been overlooked for the most part of the Grands Prix, perhaps because it has had the misfortune to be released during one of the strongest years for cinema in recent decades. (He received an Oscar nomination, for the best original scenario.)
The success of the film marked Winslet as a major talent for the future, and she won her first native nomination with her next appearance in “Sense and Sensility” by Ang Lee. For Jackson, the “celestial creatures” paved the way for the trilogy “The Lord of the Rings”. Weta Digital was created to manage the special effects, and the film won him his debut in Hollywood, “The Frighters”, ultimately allowing him to obtain his version of the classic fantastic novel by Jrr Tolkien on the screen. The later career of Lynskey was less openly spectacular, but (as my colleague BJ Colangelo writes it so brilliantly) that she always has rules.
However, for such a starry film, “Heavenly Creatures” is almost impossible to find today. It is not available for purchase or rental on streaming services, and there are only a few older copies of the floating DVD for sale online. Let’s take a closer look at what viewers are missing.
What is celestial creatures?
A picturesque opening editing presents life to Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1952. This is where we meet Pauline Parker (Melanie Lynskey), a gloomy and socially clumsy girl of the working class. She does not have many friends in school, but that changes with the arrival of Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet), a living person of 13 years from England who has just moved to town with her family. The pair binds to their love for fantasy, the Italian-American tenor Mario Lanza and debilitating diseases while they grew up.
Pauline has a delicate relationship with her mother Honora (Sarah Pierse) and spends a large part of her time with the wealthy Hulms, who welcome her in their house like any other girl. Girls are related spirits and create a fantastic world called Borovnia to play their hopes and dreams, but that turns into a refuge when Juliette’s parents announce a long trip to England without her, and life at the house of Pauline aggravates. When Juliette receives a diagnosis of tuberculosis and is quarantined in the hospital, Pauline and Juliette more the boundaries between reality and fantasy by writing long role -playing letters in their idyllic “fourth world”.
Once the girls have gathered, their parents are concerned about the intensity of their friendship and a doctor deduces that homosexuality is the cause of Pauline’s irascible behavior. The couple withdraw further in their fantasies when they learn that Juliette’s parents divorce and plan to leave Christchurch. They decide to run away together, deciding that the only thing that holds them is Pauline’s mother. With only a few weeks before Juliette’s departure, they plot an insensitive murder that they will pass as an accident.
The real case of Parker-Hulme murder was a feeling in New Zealand when details on the relationships of the girls emerged during the murder trial in 1954. The idea of making a feature film about him is from Fran Walsh, the co-producer of Peter Jackson, the co-author and the woman, and they were determined to focus on the relationship between the ass. In an interview of 1994, Jackson said that the case had been misunderstood and sensational as the history of “lesbian schoolgirl killer”, and that was something that he and Walsh wanted to approach. Working in the real newspaper of Pauline Parker (which provides a textual narration in the film), Jackson took us deeply into their world of unhealthy makeup.
How do celestial creatures hold today?
Jackson made daring choices with “celestial creatures” which could easily have been unpleasant given the true nature of history. A less imaginative director may have been tempted to play it with a mortal seriousness, but Jackson’s fantastic elements provide the film with dizzy humor and offbeat energy that transports us to the two girls’ feverish head space. None of their real life is particularly terrible, but these fantasy flights contrast perfectly with the modest and buttoned daily life in New Zealand and play as an extension of their obsession with each other.
With an accent also determined on the relationship of Pauline and Juliet rather than on the murder itself, the film demanded strong performance of its young tracks. Fortunately, Jackson found two prodigious talents in Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet, who became close friends on the set (Lynskey later admitted that she had a broken heart when they separated after Winslet Shot to Superstardom with “Titanic” a few years later). Both, Winslet’s revolutionary performance has aged the worst; Juliet is full of joyful vigor that masks deeper insecurity, but it is made up of the whole film as much as possible. Her character is supposed to be boring, but Winslet’s representation seems even more to a retrospective note now that we know that she is able to provide powerful turns with more subtlety. On the other hand, the performance of Lynskey as an awkward and poorly understood incomplete the film each time Winslet or the fantastic sequences threaten to go too far.
Beyond the two stars of “Cene Créatures”, the secret MVP is Sarah Peirse as the mother of Pauline. I remember thinking that she was a bit of a singer and instincts with the girls when I watched the film for the first time in adolescence, but now that I am older, I see a sensitive portrait of a worried parent trying to do his best for her daughter, and her disappearance is painfully sad. Jackson manages the murder with sensitivity, offering a haunting final scene of ethereal beauty taking place at “The Humming Chorus” by Puccini by “Madame Butterfly”. Stories about complicated female relationships have been managed with more nuances since (“Ghost World”, “My Summer of Love”), but “celestial creatures” are always an absorbing study of young toxic love. It is also fascinating to see the Launchpad from which the quarries of Lynskey, Winslet and Jackson have taken off, and the film which indirectly opened a cinematographic portal towards the land of the middle of the middle.
