With Peter Jackson now the established big-time director of epics, such as Lord of the Rings, King Kong and the upcoming Hobbit films, his 1950s set true crime drama Heavenly Creatures - winner of the Silver Lion at the 1994 Venice Film Festival - feels somehow more intimate and whimsical than ever before. This small town story of two isolated and unhinged teenage girls stars then unknown actresses Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynsky as Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker, who in 1954 brutally murdered Pauline's mother Honora (Sarah Peirse) after coming to feel that she was the obstacle against their being together forever. Jackson successfully humanises and even elicits empathy for his naive, escapist protagonists without detracting from the horror of the crime itself, made all the more unpalatable by its basis in reality. The murder, when it comes, is a visceral, upsetting punch in the gut - difficult to watch and heart-breaking as anything. Yet both girls have lives touched by tragedy and depression, bearing the scars of sickly childhoods, whilst their precocious intelligence sees them alienated until they find each other. With this established - and with the sheer joy that accompanies their every on-screen meeting - we come to understand why the threat of separation is too much to bear, especially in the context of those hormonally volatile formative years in which everything seems like a bigger deal than it really is. Apparently much was made of the so-called lesbianism between the girls when a horrified New Zealand press reported on the murder at the time, though Jackson steers well clear of making this a sensationalist or exploitative element even as he doesn't shy away from it. Homosexuality is indeed discussed by concerned adults who are shocked at the girls closeness, and Pauline is sent to a therapist who seeks to cure her of this "mental disease", yet the infatuation between the two seems born from their intensely passionate friendship and is almost A-sexual. The newly-founded Weta digital provided some handsome, if primitive, CGI work as fantasy and reality collide with the results being intermittently winsome and highly disturbing. The effect of combining vibrant fantasy with grizzly murder is much more rewarding here than it was in 2009's adaptation of The Lovely Bones and, in fact, this is Jackson at his very best - finding a compassionate, restrained medium between the crassness of his earliest work (Bad Taste, Braindead) and the bombast pomp of his epics.
Extras
Despite not inheriting any special features from WingNut Films (the Region 1 blu-ray release is notably vanilla), UK distributor Peccadillo Pictures has done a credible job bolstering this blu-ray package. Firstly, the cover art is far more tasteful than past incarnations, which have tended to play up the horror/thriller element of the film with tacky, blood-splattered designs. Also included are a half-dozen equally tasteful art cards - and whilst I'm never going to feel a sudden urge to look at these, let alone put them up on my wall, I can't fault Peccadillo for effort. A newly commissioned retrospective documentary, lasting around 29 minutes, is also included. This sees critics Kim Newman, Rosie Fletcher and Alan Jones giving interviews about their memories of the film from 1994, which are interesting and serve as a fitting companion to the feature. A 3 minute stills gallery and a number of trailers (for several of the distributors World Cinema releases as well as Heavenly Creatures) round things out on a disc which is sparse but lovingly presented. This is one instance where a lack of features doesn't seem to speak of a lack of respect or laziness on the part of the distributor. Heavenly Creatures is released on Blu-ray today.