Heavenly Creatures - Peter Jackson (1994)

Pauline Parker: We have decided how sad it is for other people that they cannot appreciate our genius.

It is said that any friendship enters the scene fully equipped. Every friendship always carries within itself all possible degrees of depth waiting to be explored. When two friends deepen their relationship, they are only going deeper into their friendship, up to the limit they establish (or can establish), tacitly and by mutual agreement. No one could say where it is, because there are no borders, and love is not at the end of this road. If a friendship slides into love, then the friendship must die first. Friendship and love cannot coexist. This is why friendships that occur between people of different sexes are the most vulnerable and the most exposed to an abrupt end.

Among friends, those that bind girls are more stable and durable. Boys find reasons for dissatisfaction too quickly. They are also circumspect, jealous, mean, and possessive...When friendships die, they rarely do so discreetly. The more serious they were, the more tumultuous and noisy their end will be.

Very few friendships survive the test of time. Almost all end in permanent ruptures, irreparable reproaches, or open enmity, unless they fail due to boredom, deception, or routine, which ultimately means death since friendship not reaffirmed daily is already doomed to disappear.

However, friendships can also get sick, and in general, they are not viewed positively by others. Of course, declaratively, they are always praised and invoked, but from envy to intrigue, the reaction of others to the friendship they are not part of is hostile.

"Heavenly Creatures" is a true story: the Parker-Hulme case of 1954 in Christchurch, New Zealand. Two teenage girls, aged 14 and 15, decide to kill one girl's mother, identified as an obstacle in the way of the relationship they cultivate. The crime is discovered, the teenagers are arrested, and the trial finds them guilty and sends them to reeducation centers, but justice punishes their friendship the most. It receives the heaviest sentence: life imprisonment. The two will never be allowed to meet again, and that seems to me to be an unparalleled cruelty, something that equals in imagination the tortures that only the sick fantasies of Nazi camps, the Inquisition, or the secret police dungeons were able to produce.

It seems extremely interesting to me because when it comes to friendship, people are most often circumspect and hesitant. When they receive it, they rarely understand it. When they receive it and understand it, they find it hard to keep it, frequently destroying it, especially through excessive concern to maintain it. When they don't receive it and understand it, they groan and sigh for it, and when they receive it and don't understand it, they pass by it indifferently. All these make friendship something isolated and secretive on Earth: because it is true that "few people have had a friend" on this planet.

In "Heavenly Creatures", the two protagonists (brilliantly portrayed by Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey, the latter making her on-screen debut) develop a closeness that quickly leads them, in the most direct way, towards a private world that society quickly labels as toxic and dangerous. No, this is not about lesbianism (although there is an erotic component). The film does not aim to investigate the events in this way, considering gender approaches to be superficial and diversionary. Instead, it chooses to remain focused on the analysis of chemistry, affinities, mechanisms, and how they are installed within the heroines, using a masterful arsenal of directorial techniques.

From a strictly cinematic standpoint, "Heavenly Creatures" is an absolutely remarkable achievement. Peter Jackson demonstrates an overflowing talent of undeniable singularity and originality. Tedious alternating sequences of images, taken in short segments, skillfully prepare the viewer for scenes of immersion in the unreal. The film's opening sequence is a perfect summary of what you will see in the 99-minute projection: a short documentary-style presentation of the town in vintage colors (attempting to establish a sense of time), interrupted by scenes belonging to the end of the film, intercut in the same rhythm with others from another place (the deck of a ship), mixing sepia, black and white, and color recordings, on a soundtrack altered by grotesque or tender distortions...and two girls running away...That's what the film is about, and their friendship goes beyond its limits.

At the time, the news made front-page headlines for a long period, with the killers being labeled as psychopaths, lesbians, Satanists, cult members, fanatics...As the trial progressed, however, all these hypotheses fell apart, causing increasing difficulties for the jurors and judges. It became increasingly clear that the two murderers had significant artistic and cultural interests, were mentally sound, and, moreover, were intellectually above average for their age; they resorted to violence (which they abhorred) only occasionally and solely to protect the friendship that bound them. Therefore, without any precedent that I know of, the court sentenced their friendship...first and foremost, even though, evidently, the friendship was acting in legitimate self-defense.