Heavenly Creatures

Heavenly Creatures (1994) tells the Parker-Hulme murder, which happened in New Zealand in 1954. Two teenage girls in Christchurch become friends and build an entire imagined world together: their own kingdom, their own saints, their own novels. When their families try to separate them, on 22 June 1954 they kill Pauline Parker's mother. Peter Jackson directed, a complete change of direction after low budget splatter films like Bad Taste and Braindead. That earlier craft is still visible in the fantasy sequences, used here to show what is inside the girls. It is Kate Winslet's first film. She was chosen from 175 girls, and Jackson said he picked her for the intensity she brought to the part. Melanie Lynskey also begins here. Juliet Hulme later became the crime novelist Anne Perry. She was too young for the death penalty and was released in 1959 on condition that she never contact Parker again. It cost five million dollars and grossed 5.4 million worldwide. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Original Screenplay and won the Silver Lion at Venice. It runs 109 minutes. Good for: true crime, stories about adolescence and obsession, and the arrival of Kate Winslet. Less good for: the murder is detailed and hard to bear. Because the film takes the girls' point of view, little room is left for the victim. The register of the fantasy sequences strikes some viewers as at odds with the weight of what happened.