Cracks

It comes as no surprise to learn that Eva Green was instructed to watch Picnic at Hanging Rock, Heavenly Creatures, Lord of the Flies and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie to prepare for this role. Cracks is a mixture of all of these films, watered down and with almost no real identity or ideas of its own. There’s nothing wrong with paying homage to great films – Picnic is certainly that – but surely some originality is needed, or you end up with a rather feeble, pointless exercise.

Green plays teacher Miss G in a girls’ boarding school on a remote island. It’s a stuffy, dusty place run by the dour Miss Nieven (Sinead Cusack on tight-lipped form), but Miss G is the girls’ saviour, a free spirit who lounges around in 1930s leisure wear, smoking and lecturing them on the joys of freeing the mind through exercise. Exactly what it is she teaches is never made clear, but she spends a lot of time coaching them in diving in to the freezing-looking lake by the school, and loaning them apparently forbidden books.

Into this claustrophobic environment is thrust a glamorous, exotic flower in the form of Fiamma (Maria Valverde), the Spanish daughter of a rich diplomat whose presence throws the girls into chaos. The new girl stands up to house captain, the brattish Di (Juno Temple, fresh from playing another posh girl in Glorious 39), and slowly wins over the other girls with her grace. When Fiamma displays a spectacular skill for diving she gets the attention of Miss G, who develops a total fixation on the Spaniard, following her around and telling her they are going on a great journey together. Fiamma rejects Miss G’s advances until a drunken encounter, which has predictably disastrous consequences.

It’s obvious what atmosphere director Jordan Scott – daughter of Ridley – wants to evoke, the desire to burst free of an oppressive school and release all that built-up sexual frustration, and in that respect it’s a success,. What’s disappointing is the total lack of direction – having created that world, the film goes nowhere with it. It’s all terribly one-note – slow-mo shots of schoolgirls diving into water, sometimes naked, and slowly brushing each other’s hair is all well and good, but Hanging Rock this isn’t. There’s simply no pace to the story or much of a point either. Miss G is clearly bonkers from the start – those headpieces! – and Fiamma is doomed from the moment she turns up wearing gorgeous clothes and speaking in a foreign accent.

Eva Green’s casting is a problem too. She is a talented actress, but a repressed English schoolmistress? Come on… her accent and look are far too European and exotic to convince as a dried-up teacher. By the end her wild-eyed ramblings are laugh-out-loud bad, not helped by a script that puts too many pretentious platitudes into her mouth. It might work in a book, but in a film overblown lines simply don’t work.

Plus points would be some atmospheric photography – Scott is Ridley’s girl after all – and an eye-catching performance from Valverde as the inscrutable Fiamma. With her dark eyes, perfect skin and rosebud lips she’s enough to drive any teacher mad with desire, male or female. Overall though it’s a disappointment, and a waste of Green’s talents.

Overall Verdict: High on atmosphere but low on content, Cracks is an interesting but ultimately frustrating misfire.

Reviewer: Mike Martin