MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘Heavenly Creatures’ a Devilish Delight

“Heavenly Creatures” is what Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme called each other, but those are just words, and words, no matter how passionate and adoring, can only hint at the intensity of the attachment these two teen-age girls felt.

Inseparable real-life schoolmates and soul mates in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1952, Pauline and Juliet inhabited a symbiotic world that was giddy, euphoric and chilling. Frightfully self-absorbed, their conduct unnerved the adult world and led, with horrible inevitability, to what is still considered the most celebrated criminal case in New Zealand history.

New Zealand director Peter Jackson, best known for the cult fright favorite “Dead Alive,” has nervily translated the Parker-Hulme case into film terms, and an adventurous, accomplished piece of business, burning with cinematic energy, it turns out to be.

Utilizing a thoughtful, thoroughly researched script he co-wrote with Frances Walsh, Jackson directs in a way that is both tightly controlled and highly emotional. Photographed by Alun Bollinger, “Creatures” has a witty, overwrought visual style that the girls themselves would probably favor, and it makes good dramatic use of state-of-the-art special effects.

Related in voice over taken from a diary kept by Pauline, “Creatures” begins with a newsreel of Christchurch, the kind of quaint, bucolic and boring place that scandal isn’t supposed to touch. The city takes especial pride in the Christchurch Girls High School, a classically prim establishment that insists on proper uniforms and sensible shoes.

Pauline (Melanie Lynskey), her sullen face framed by dark curly ringlets, is a bright but quietly resentful ninth-grade student who comes from undeniably lower-class stock. Her feckless father, Bert (Simon O’Connor), is prone to silly sight gags involving fish, and her hard-working mother, Honora (Sarah Peirse), has to take in boarders to pay the family expenses.

All this ceases to matter to Pauline the day Juliet (Kate Winslet) arrives from dreamy England. Totally upper class, knowing more about the intricacies of the French subjunctive than her teachers and not shy about proving it, Juliet may be outwardly glamorous and confident, but she is as high strung and emotionally needy as Pauline. Almost immediately, they bond with a fierceness that no one knows quite what to make of.

Starting with a shared passion for Mario Lanza, “only the world’s greatest tenor,” Pauline and Juliet progress to creating elaborate candle-lit shrines to their idols. Determined to either go to Hollywood (“It’s better than heaven; no Christians”) or have a novel published in New York, they begin to jointly work on a project.

Realizing “how hard it is for other people to appreciate our genius,” the girls retreat more and more to an imaginary place they call “the Fourth World,” which includes a medieval kingdom named Borovnia. With fine use of up-to-the-minute effects like morphing, “Creatures” makes it possible for audiences to physically enter these worlds with Pauline and Juliet, to experience the surrender to fantasy as completely as they do.

This ability to get inside hysteria and obsession, the skill to make us feel sensations as intensely as its protagonists, is what makes “Creatures” memorable.

Helped by remarkable performances by its young actresses (Winslet has worked in theater and TV in England, Lynskey is pretty much an absolute beginner), “Creatures” insidiously encourages us to side with these two young women. Clearly they are so much fresher, more radiant and energetic than their elders, who begin to dully suspect that something as mundane as sexual attraction is holding these two together.

So when Pauline and Juliet teeter at the edge of sanity, when their infatuation becomes uncontrollable, their willfulness frightening, we go over the top with them, horrified co-conspirators almost to the end. “Heavenly Creatures” does not romanticize or excuse, it merely presents the inevitable and leaves us to shake our heads in wonder.

* MPAA rating: R, for a chilling murder and some sexuality. Times guidelines: The murder is graphic, but the sexual sequence is quite brief.

‘Heavenly Creatures’

Melanie Lynskey: Pauline Parker Kate Winslet: Juliet Hulme Sarah Peirse: Honora Parker Diana Kent: Hilda Hulme Clive Merrison: Henry Hulme Simon O’ Connor: Herbert Rieper A production, released by Miramax Films. Director Peter Jackson. Producer Jim Booth. Executive producer Hanno Huth. Screenplay Peter Jackson and Frances Walsh. Cinematographer Alun Bollinger. Editor James Selkirk. Music Peter Dasent. Production design Grant Major. Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes.

* In limited release in Southern California.