Cracks

A girls' boarding school in 1930s England. Miss G teaches the diving team and is the only attractive thing about the place; the travels she describes, the books she reads and the life outside enchant all of them. A Spanish aristocrat arrives at the school. When Miss G's attention shifts to her, the team's balance breaks. The subject is not adolescence but the recognition that the teacher is as imprisoned as the girls. None of the lives Miss G describes is real, and the first to see it is the girl at the film's centre; from that moment the adoration turns into something else. The form is closed and cool: the lake, the dormitory, the corridor. Violence arrives only in the last act; until then everything is built through looks. The source is Sheila Kohler's novel, where the events take place in South Africa; the film moves them to England. It is Jordan Scott's first feature. Eva Green plays Miss G, Juno Temple the team's leader Di, and María Valverde the newcomer Fiamma. Who it is for: viewers who like boarding-school drama and films about the internal politics of closed communities. Who it is not for: anyone who will see the ending coming early and lose patience; the film is very slow until its final half hour.