Based on the notorious 1954 Parker–Hulme murder case in Christchurch, the film focuses on the relationship between two teenage girls—Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme—which culminates in the murder of Parker's mother. The events of the film span the period from their meeting in 1952 to the murder in 1954.
The film opened in 1994 at the 51st Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Lion and went on to receive widespread critical acclaim, becoming one of the best-received movies of that year. Reviewers praised most aspects of the production, with particular attention given to the performances by the previously unknown Winslet and Lynskey, as well as for Jackson's directing. The film received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Plot
In 1952 Christchurch, Juliet Hulme, an affluent 13-year-old English girl, transfers to a new school and befriends Pauline Parker, a 14-year-old girl from a working-class family. Bonding over a shared history of severe childhood disease and isolating hospitalizations, they develop an intense friendship. Pauline admires Juliet's outspoken arrogance and beauty.
Unlike the peaceful intellectual life Juliet shares with her family, Pauline's relationship with her mother, Honora, is hostile, and the two fight constantly. Pauline spends most of her time at the Hulmes', where she feels accepted.
Together, Juliet and Pauline paint, write stories, make figurines, and eventually create a fantasy kingdom called Borovnia. It is the setting of the adventure novels they write together, which they hope to have published and made into films in Hollywood. Over time, it begins to be as real to them as the real world. Juliet introduces Pauline to the idea of "the Fourth World," a Heaven without Christians where music and art are celebrated. Juliet believes she will go there when she dies.
During a day trip to Port Levy, Juliet's parents announce their plan to go on a trip together, leaving Juliet by herself. Hysterical at the prospect of being left alone, Juliet experiences the Fourth World for the first time, perceiving it as a land where all is beautiful and she is safe. She asks Pauline to come with her, and this world also becomes visible to Pauline. This shared spiritual vision confirms their Fourth World belief and begins to affect their perception of events in the everyday world.
When Juliet is diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to a clinic, she and Pauline begin writing to each other, not only as themselves but in the roles of the royal couple of Borovnia. During this time, Pauline has a sexual relationship with a lodger, making Juliet jealous. Their fantasy life becomes a useful escape from the real world, and the two engage in increasingly violent, even murderous, fantasies about people who oppress them. After Juliet is released from the clinic, their relationship intensifies. Wary of her attachment to Pauline, Juliet's father speaks to Pauline's parents, who take her to a doctor. The doctor suspects that Pauline is homosexual and uses it to explain her dramatic weight loss and increasing anger at her mother.
Juliet's parents announce their intention to divorce and leave Christchurch, with Juliet to stay with a relative in South Africa. Increasingly distraught at the thought of separation, the two girls plan to run away together. When that plan becomes impossible, the two share a bathtub and talk about murdering Pauline's mother, seeing her as the primary obstacle to their being together.
The two girls spend the last three weeks together at Juliet's house. At the end of that time, Pauline returns home, and the two finalize plans for the murder. Honora plans a trip for the three of them to Victoria Park. After having tea, the three walk on a path down a steep hillside. When Honora bends over to pick up a pink charm the girls have deliberately dropped, Juliet and Pauline bludgeon her to death with a broken piece of brick put in an old stocking.
A textual epilogue reveals that Pauline and Juliet were arrested shortly after the murder, sentenced to five years in prison, as they were too young to face the death penalty, and released separately in 1959 on the condition that they never see each other again.
Fran Walsh suggested to Peter Jackson (who was noted for horror-comedy films) that they write a film about the notorious Parker–Hulme murder. Jackson took the idea to his long-time collaborator, producer Jim Booth (who died after filming). The three filmmakers decided that the film should tell the story of the friendship between the two girls rather than focus on the murder and trial. "The friendship was for the most part a rich and rewarding one, and we tried to honour that in the film. It was our intention to make a film about a friendship that went terribly wrong," said Peter Jackson.[5]
Walsh had been interested in the case since her early childhood. "I first came across it in the late Sixties when I was ten years old.[5]The Sunday Times devoted two whole pages to the story with an accompanying illustration of the two girls. I was struck by the description of the dark and mysterious friendship that existed between them—by the uniqueness of the world the two girls had created for themselves."
Jackson and Walsh researched the story by reading contemporaneous newspaper accounts of the trial. They decided that the sensational aspects of the case that so titillated newspaper readers in 1954 were far removed from the story that Jackson and Walsh wished to tell. "In the 1950s, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme were branded as possibly the most evil people on earth. What they had done seemed without rational explanation, and people could only assume that there was something terribly wrong with their minds," states Jackson. To bring a more humane version of events to the screen, the filmmakers undertook a nationwide search for people who had had close involvement with Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme forty years earlier. This included tracing and interviewing seventeen of their former classmates and teachers from Christchurch Girls' High School. In addition, Jackson and Walsh spoke to neighbours, family friends, colleagues, police officers, lawyers and psychologists. Jackson and Walsh also read Pauline's diary, in which she made daily entries documenting her friendship with Juliet Hulme and events throughout their relationship. From the diary entries it became apparent that Pauline and Juliet were intelligent, imaginative, outcast young women who possessed a wicked and somewhat irreverent sense of humour. In the film all of Pauline's voice-overs are excerpts from her journal entries.
Casting
The role of Pauline was cast after Walsh scouted schools all over New Zealand to find a Pauline 'look-alike'. She had trouble finding an actress who resembled Pauline and had acting talent before discovering Melanie Lynskey. Kate Winslet was among 175 girls to audition for the film and was cast after impressing Jackson with the intensity she brought to her part.[6] The girls were both so absorbed by their roles that they kept on acting as Pauline and Juliet after the filming was done, as is described on Jackson's website.[citation needed]
Principal photography
The entire film was shot on location in Christchurch in 1993. Jackson has been quoted as saying "Heavenly Creatures is based on a true story, and as such I felt it important to shoot the movie on locations where the actual events took place."[5]
Post-production
The visual effects in the film were handled by the then newly created Weta Digital.[7] The girls' fantasy life, and the ‘Borovnian’ extras (the characters the girls made up) were supervised by Richard Taylor while the digital effects were supervised by George Port. Taylor and his team constructed more than 70 full-sized latex costumes to represent the Borovnian crowds—plasticine figures that inhabit Pauline and Juliet's magical fantasy world. Heavenly Creatures contains more than thirty shots that were digitally manipulated, ranging from the morphing garden of the ‘Fourth World’ to castles in fields and the sequences with "Orson Welles" (played by Jean Guérin).
Music
"Just a Closer Walk with Thee" – Choirs of Burnside High School, Cashmere High School, Hagley Community College, Villa Maria College
Heavenly Creatures garnered wide critical praise. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 95% score based on 108 reviews, with an average rating of 8.20/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Dark, stylish, and captivating, Heavenly Creatures signals both the auspicious debut of Kate Winslet and the arrival of Peter Jackson as more than just a cult director."[8] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 86 out of 100 based on reviews from 31 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[9]
Nick Hyman, writing for Metacritic, thought that 1994's Oscar-winning Forrest Gump was equally matched by "Memorable Film(s) Not Nominated for Best Picture", including Heavenly Creatures, of which Hyman said, "Peter Jackson's masterful blend of fantastical visions and a heartbreaking real-life murder tragedy has arguably never been topped."[10]
Owen Gleiberman, writing for Entertainment Weekly, gave the film a B+ and said, "Set in the early '50s, in the New Zealand village of Christchurch, this ripe hallucination of a movie – a rhapsody in purple – has been photographed in sun-drenched candy color that lends it the surreal clarity of a dream... There's something bracing about the way that Heavenly Creatures serves up its heroines' fantasies with literal-minded brute force." Gleiberman complains that Jackson never quite explains "why the two girls have metamorphosed into the '50s teenybop answer to Leopold and Loeb," yet concludes, "Still, if the pleasures of Heavenly Creatures remain defiantly on the surface, on that level the movie is a dazzler."[11]
Box office
Heavenly Creatures had a limited box office success but performed admirably in various countries, including the United States, where it grossed a total of $3,049,135 during its limited run in 57 theatres; it grossed $5,438,120 worldwide. In the US it opened on two screens in New York City (Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Plaza) and had the biggest per-screen gross of the weekend with an average of $15,796, grossing $41,323 in its opening 5 days.[3][4]
In 1996 the film was released on videocassette and on Laserdisc at its original runtime of 99 minutes. In 2002 the film received DVD releases in Region 1 and Region 4 in an uncut version, which ran for 109 minutes. Region 2 released the original 99-minute theatrical version.
Kate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress. Known for her roles as headstrong and complicated women in independent films, particularly period dramas, she has received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards, five BAFTA Awards and five Golden Globe Awards. Time magazine named Winslet one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2009 and 2021. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2012.
The Parker–Hulme murder case was the murder of Honorah Rieper in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 22 June 1954. The perpetrators were Rieper's teenage daughter Pauline Parker and her friend Juliet Hulme. Parker was 16 at the time, while Hulme was 15.
Anne Perry was a British writer best known as the author of the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt and William Monk series of historical detective fiction.
Dame Frances Rosemary Walsh is a New Zealand screenwriter and film producer.
The Frighteners is a 1996 supernatural comedy horror film directed by Peter Jackson and co-written with Fran Walsh. The film stars Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, Peter Dobson, John Astin, Dee Wallace Stone, Jeffrey Combs, R. Lee Ermey and Jake Busey. The Frighteners tells the story of Frank Bannister (Fox), an architect who develops psychic abilities allowing him to see, hear, and communicate with ghosts after his wife's murder. He initially uses his new abilities to befriend ghosts, whom he sends to haunt people so that he can charge them handsome fees for "exorcising" the ghosts. However, an entity posing as the Grim Reaper appears, able to attack the living and the dead, prompting Frank to investigate the supernatural presence.
Matricide is the act of killing one's own mother.
Ilam is a suburb of Christchurch, New Zealand about five kilometres west of the city centre. It is the location of the University of Canterbury.
Melanie Jayne Lynskey is a New Zealand actress. Known for her portrayals of complex women and her command of American accents, she works predominantly in independent films and television. She is the recipient of numerous accolades, including three Critics' Choice Awards and nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards.
Clive Merrison is a British actor of film, television, stage and radio. He trained at Rose Bruford College. He is best known for his long running BBC Radio portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, having played the part in all 64 episodes of the 1989–1998 series of Sherlock Holmes dramatisations, and all 16 episodes of The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (2002–2010).
Christchurch Girls' High School in Christchurch, New Zealand, was established in 1877 and is the second oldest girls-only secondary school in the country, after Otago Girls' High School.
Port Levy is a long, sheltered bay and settlement on Banks Peninsula in Canterbury, New Zealand. The current population is under 100, but in the mid-19th century it was the largest Māori settlement in Canterbury with a population of about 400 people. It is named after Solomon Levey, an Australian merchant and ship owner who sent a number of trading vessels to the Banks Peninsula area during the 1820s.
The Curious Room: Plays, Film Scripts and an Opera is a collection of dramatic works by English writer Angela Carter, published posthumously by Chatto and Windus in 1996.
Anagrams of Desire is an academic textbook about Angela Carter's media writings. Written by Charlotte Crofts and published by Manchester University Press in 2003, the full title is Anagrams of Desire: Angela Carter's Writing for Radio, Film and Television.
Don't Deliver Us from Evil is a 1971 French horror drama film directed by Joël Séria, in his directorial debut, and starring Jeanne Goupil, Catherine Wagener, and Bernard Dhéran. It follows two Catholic schoolgirls in France who are drawn toward increasingly evil deeds. It is loosely based on the Parker–Hulme murder case of 1954.
"Lisa the Drama Queen" is the ninth episode of the twentieth season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on January 25, 2009, and guest-starred Emily Blunt as Juliet. This is the last hold-over episode from the season 19 (KABF) production line.
Sir Peter Robert Jackson is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known as the director, writer and producer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003) and the Hobbit trilogy (2012–2014), both of which are adapted from the novels of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien. Other notable films include the critically lauded drama Heavenly Creatures (1994), the horror comedy The Frighteners (1996), the epic monster remake film King Kong (2005), the World War I documentary film They Shall Not Grow Old (2018) and the documentary The Beatles: Get Back (2021). He is the fourth-highest-grossing film director of all-time, his films having made over $6.5 billion worldwide.
The Cranmer Centre was a historic building in Christchurch, New Zealand. Its original use, until 1986, was as the Christchurch Girls' High School, the second high school for girls in the country. Registered with the New Zealand Historic Places Trust as a Category I heritage building, it was purchased by Arts Centre of Christchurch Trust in 2001, and demolished in May 2011 following the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake.
Henry Rainsford Hulme was a British scientist who is considered one of the four major minds behind the successful British hydrogen bomb project. He was the father of author and convicted murderer Anne Perry.
New Zealand actress Melanie Lynskey made her film debut in 1994 when she played teenage murderess Pauline Parker in Heavenly Creatures, a crime drama directed by Peter Jackson. Following a hiatus, she resumed her career with a supporting role in the fairy tale romance Ever After (1998) and spent the next few years appearing in a variety of big-budget and small-scale features, such as Detroit Rock City, But I'm a Cheerleader, Coyote Ugly (2000), Snakeskin (2001), Abandon (2002), and the commercially successful romantic comedy Sweet Home Alabama (2002).
↑ Lovell, Glenn (25 December 1994). "The Past Picture Show the Good, the Bad and the Ugly -- a Year Worth's of Movie Memories". San Jose Mercury News (Morning Finaled.). p.3.
↑ Zoller Seitz, Matt (12 January 1995). "Personal best From a year full of startling and memorable movies, here are our favorites". Dallas Observer.
Elleray, Michelle. "Heavenly Creatures in Godzone" in: Out Takes: Essays on Queer Theory and Film. Edited by Ellis Hanson. Duke University Press, 1999. pp.223+. ISBN0-8223-2342-7.
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