Obsession, when it takes hold, is not a fragrance but a lethal gas. It envelops and consumes us; it is all the air we breathe. It should make for an ideal film subject. But moviemakers rarely know what to do with obsession. They make it trivial, cartoonish. A superfiend itches to blow up the planet -- big hairy deal. An id-monster like Freddy Krueger dices and slices kids as they sleep. Zzzzzz!
Those scenarios are timid next to the real thing: the power one person has over another -- the puppy love, say, that turns rabid as two souls merge in a toxic rapture. For most kids this is just a part of growing up; somehow they learn to cope with the glandular and emotional convulsions that accompany the transformation from child to teenager. Yet the threat of surrender is always there. The teenage girls in the wonderfully unsettling movie Heavenly Creatures create their own fantasy world out of youthful obsession, and then it spins out of their control. The result is murder.
You should know -- actually, for complete, suspenseful enjoyment of the film, you very much should not know, but the word is out, so we're obliged to tell you -- that Heavenly Creatures is based on a notorious murder case. In 1954 in Christchurch, New Zealand, Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme were convicted of bludgeoning Pauline's mother Honora to death. The girls were "detained at Her Majesty's pleasure" until 1959, when Juliet left New Zealand and Pauline went into hiding. It was recently revealed that Juliet became a best-selling mystery novelist who lives in Scotland and writes under the name Anne Perry. Perry claims to remember little of the murder; the hero of several of her novels is a detective, William Monk, who occasionally suffers from amnesia.
Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) and Juliet (Kate Winslet) are children of two different cultures. Juliet's father is an English canon, and the girl is blond, worldly, brash; she was hospitalized for lung disease, and has been brought to New Zealand for the climate. Pauline, whose father manages a fish store, is dark and broody; she has leg scars from the ravages of osteomyelitis. Juliet sees their wounds as badges of spiritual aristocracy: "All the best people have bad chests and bone diseases. It's all frightfully romantic."
Heavenly Creatures is frightfully romantic too, and romantically frightening. It ascends and plummets with the girls' mercurial moods. As they fall into a conspiracy of affection, the film lures the viewer into the girls' fantasy world, as elaborate as that created by the Bronte sisters: a kingdom called Borovnia, where the clay statues they have molded come to life as blue- blooded versions of their favorite "saints" (Mario Lanza and James Mason) and demons (Orson Welles, "the most hideous man alive"). But demons can also be sexy. When a fellow makes clumsy love to Pauline, she pays him no heed and imagines herself ravaged by her fantasy Welles.