Heavenly
Creatures depicts the friendship between Pauline Parker (Melanie
Lynskey) and Juliet Hulme (Kate Winslet), a pair of teenage schoolgirls in
Christchurch, New Zealand, as recorded in Pauline’s diaries. Pauline is from a working-class
family, relying on lodgers to generate extra income for the house. In contrast
Juliet’s family is rich and originally from England, her parents often travelling
abroad to work. Pauline and Juliet bond over a shared love of the arts, a vivid
imagination and their sickly childhoods. As their relation intensifies and their
parents become more concerned, Juliet and Pauline ultimately decide to commit
murder in order to remain together forever.
Heavenly
Creatures is tragic in its portrayal of Pauline and Juliet. Both girls
are isolated from their peers, due to their love for fantasy adventures and
their disapproval of authority figures. However, it is not entirely unwarranted
as Pauline’s narration regularly states they are superior in genius to everyone
else. Director Peter Jackson employs the tone of an epic romance to his film
with Alun Bollinger’s cinematography, consisting of long aerial shots of the
rolling hills, Steadicam revolving around Juliet and Pauline dancing together,
and hand-held camera following the pair as they crash through the woods. Jackson
stages some wonderfully imaginative sequences; one example involves the girls
narrating a scene with a sandcastle. The camera charges at the sandcastle,
knocking down the door and continuing up the stairs as the girls watch through
the windows. As the parents begin to separate them, Juliet and Pauline despair
at their situation and double down on their efforts to speak to each other via
letters. Heavenly Creatures never
fully attempts to explain their mental state; when Pauline visits the doctor,
he diagnoses her as homosexual (considered a mental illness until the 1970s)
and attributes all of her behaviour to that ‘diagnosis’. Separation anxiety
from her childhood is subtly suggested to be the driving force in Juliet’s
behaviour, whilst Pauline appears to be resentful of her poor lifestyle and
believes her mother Honora (Sarah Peirse) is solely to blame for her woes.