Movie Muser

Director Carol Morley’s British version of Picnic At Hanging Rock has a tough act to follow – it’s one of my favourite films – and although a brave stab it is something of a disappointment.

Morley is very open about the fact her film is inspired by Picnic, and announces it very clearly early on with two huge clues – a group of schoolgirls are sitting on a bank during an art lesson, and have to resort to umbrellas – rain is their problem rather than the Australian girls’ blazing sunshine – and Abigail here (Pugh) has the same hairstyle as Miranda in the 1974 film. The difference here is that Morley has as the theme of her film mass hysteria, or a psychogenic outbreak, at a girls’ school, which erupts in mass fainting, rather than Picnic’s mystery of the girls who disappear at a rock, are found but have no memory of the event.

The film tries to conjure the same atmosphere of teenage frenzy. Set in 1969, Abigail is a school’s most popular pupil, she is bright, pretty, charismatic and sexually far more advanced than her peers. Maisie Williams of Game of Thrones fame plays her best friend Lydia, rather more plain of face, and the pair do all of the things teenage girls do together – helpless giggling, discovering poetry and music, carving their name into an old oak tree where they promise to meet on the same day every year. However, with shades of Heavenly Creatures, there is also more than a suggestion that their friendship is becoming too intense, bordering on the sexual.

It’s easy to understand why Lydia would want to lose herself in her glamorous friend. Her home life is rotten – her mum (Maxine Peake) is a granite faced, monosyllabic hairdresser with a fierce beehive who hasn’t left the house in two years, and their home is a riot of beige. Even her brother annoys her, as brothers do when you’re a teenager, but especially when he turns his attention to Abigail.

Such is her hold on her peers, especially Lydia, that when Abigail starts showing signs of physical distress – nosebleeds, bruised skin, fainting – everyone else seems to follow her. Morley says that this is apparently very common in single-sex institutions, especially for girls, but the mystery here is what is actually happening. Are all the girls genuinely sick, if so why? Is it merely psycho-suggestion, or is there a darker reason? Lydia’s brother says it’s because the school likes on lay-lines, but there are also shots of the moon and raw eggs which suggest something more sinister. Or is it actually a physical problem, brought on by the girls’ chemistry teacher?

Morley’s film certainly hits the mark visually. The school itself is never fully seen, just the ponds and trees surrounding it, and several shots of golden leaves falling into water are stunning. Lydia’s walk home through the woods is ravishing but never quite threatening enough, while the period details, especially Lydia’s horrible home with its massive telly and shiny radio are spot on.

She also gets fantastic performances from her cast. Greta Scacchi is great as the stern teacher who believes these fainting girls are putting it on, but with a dark secret of her own – one of many storylines that peters out into a blind alley – and Monica Dolan is equally as good as the headmistress who seems less bothered by her pupils’ frenzied antics. Florence Pugh is perfect as Abigail, the ethereal blonde everyone seems drawn to but who seems to have almost a deathwish and whose body seems to be hiding a terrible secret. If she is the Kate Winslet of the piece, or the Anne-Louise Lambert, then the amazing Williams as Lydia steals the show as the Melanie Lynskey. With her oval face, thick eyebrows and pudgy body she cannot compete with her glamorous friend, but she is certainly impressive enough trying to lead a revolt in her school.

The problem here is Morley’s film never quite kicks into gear, and when it threatens to it goes off down too many tangential roads. When the girls start fainting en masse it very quickly becomes tiresome and repetitive, and the sympathy switches to the teachers who roll their eyes at such silly behaviour. Clearly something is behind this outbreak, but when it is revealed it is disappointingly routine plot-wise, and even Williams’ great acting can’t lift it. The woozy music and shots of the moon become borderline grating, which is a shame as the set-up is so intriguing and well played.

Morley’s previous film was Dreams of a Life, a part-documentary attempt to explain the mystery of how the body of a young woman was left in her London flat for three years undiscovered. It was, like this effort, a fascinating story, and an interesting attempt to be different, but in the end a frustrating dead end.

Overall verdict: A brave attempt at a British Picnic At Hanging Rock or Heavenly Creatures never quite achieves its aims, with a plot and script that wanders about too much. Nice photography and great acting almost rescue it but not quite.

Reviewer: Mike Martin

What is it with Ben Kingsley and lunatic asylums? In Shutter Island he played the supervisor at one, but the film had a huge twist – which most people guessed in five minutes. Here he plays the same part in pretty much the same film with the same twist – the only difference is he has thickened the slices of ham he serves up his performances with. It’s like a bad British version of Shutter Island made by Hammer, but even that studio at its height would have made more of it than this feeble effort – where’s Terence Fisher when you need him?

Set duting Christmas 1899, Sturgess is the kindly doctor studying the human mind, especially hysteria – we get the second explanation of that word this week after The Falling, it comes from the Greek word for womb, hence the reason women are thought to suffer exclusively from it. He witnesses an example in the form of Beckinsale, a woman committed by her husband for suffering fits, violence and depression.

When she is sent to a remote Scottish asylum he follows her, and tries to get a job as a student doctor. The asylum is run by Kingsley, who shows him round, explaining his new methods of treatment which rather than involving shock treatment and cruelty, feature music and creative work. Beckinsale seems to be responding, playing beautiful piano pieces three times a day. She however does not respond to his kindness and soft voice, it seems he has his work cut out to win her shattered trust.

When Sturgess witnesses inmates having dinner with the doctors, and nurses behaving very strangely, he begins to suspect that all is not as it seems in this remote utopia.

Based on an Edgar Allen Poe story this could have been a spooky thriller, but the cheesy script and pretty awful performances reduce it to the level of a daft horror. Beckinsale and Sturgess take their parts seriously, she in particular is the best she has been for years, while all around them everyone else notches up the hamminess to 11.

David Thewlis, as the sadistic Oirish guard, is hard to take seriously, Michael Caine dials in his performance as usual but it’s Kingsley who is mainly to blame. Ever since he has become Sir Ben he has turned in clunker after clunker, and here his collection of facial ticks, shouting and stomping around in ludicrous uniforms while sucking on his pipe adds up to one of the most over-ripe performances of the year. Worse is the fact he has done it all before, and so recently – are film-goers’ memories so short?

Overall verdict: Laughably poor attempt at some Freudian horror which is over-ripe and daft in equal measure. There are some good performances and set design in there somewhere amongst all the shouting and hamminess.

Reviewer: Mike Martin