Heavenly Creatures

Heavenly Creatures is as intense and disturbing as the realf-life crime it re-creates. Set in 1950s New Zealand, the movie enters the fantasy world of Juliet (Kate Winslet) and Pauline (Melanie Lynskey), schoolgirls whose sensual bond is deemed ”unwholesome” by their parents. Caught up in their intricate mind games (the Camelot-inspired sequences are stunning), the girls plot to murder Pauline’s mother so they won’t be separated. The film’s most unnerving aspect is its reliance on the girls’ unerring (though warped) sense of justice. It is to director Peter Jackson’s credit that the shocking crime seems an inevitable conclusion to a breathtakingly vital riendship that careens out of control. A+