Jordan Scott’s Cracks (Ireland, 2009) starts out feeling like a conventional British girls’ school melodrama – the gorgeous island/woodland setting, the prim but hormonally-prodded naiads luring each other onto the rocks of rejection and betrayal, the Miss Brodie-ish teacher/mistress and font of inspiration and adventure, and the unwelcome outsider, foisted upon them, who throws the whole cloistered idyll out of balance. But about halfway through this conventional, but gorgeously rendered, narrative, the psychological tenor of the story takes an unsettling shift, and the twist deftly recasts and reverses the loyalties and enmities that the girls, and we as the audience, have developed along the way.
‘St. Matilda’s School – Stanley Island – England 1934’ reads the legend at the film’s start, as the schoolgirl population sings ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful’ in a spacious chapel, watched over by their devout and dutiful elder instructor/matrons. The girls are delineated into smaller groups – teams. And the Red team of seven girls is captained by the resolute Di (Juno Temple), whose moon-face and pixie-sparkle-glint belie the iron fist with which she commands the team and evokes their mutual admiration of Miss Griffin (Eva Green), their primary instructor. When the charismatic and fashionable Miss G. enters the chapel belatedly, it might as well be Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo; such are the ardent glances and conspiratorial smiles that her entrance evokes from her charges.
Miss Griffin is everything worldly and wise to which the girls aspire. Her swimming and diving classes are accompanied by ‘Puttin’ On The Ritz’ on the Victrola in her dinghy. She tells tales of her extravagant travels and close-call adventures in her salon. When the girls decide to throw a midnight party in their dormitory (the Feast of St. Agnes, a fable/ritual to conjure visions of their future soulmates), Miss G. stations herself at the base of the stairway, and turns away her disapproving fellow faculty.
Into their carefree and insular existence enters Fiamma (Maria Valverde), a privileged, aristocratic Spaniard girl of obvious intelligence and regal self-possession. The girls lay down hard boundaries for her, testing her mettle, trying to wound her pride, and deriding her for not joining in their worship of Miss G. We learn that Fiamma was embroiled in a family scandal back home, and even when physically banished from the school by her teammates, no return home to her family is possible. She returns, disheartened and humiliated. “I’m not selfish, I just want to go home,” Fiamma laments. Di lashes out: “Don’t you think we all want to go home?”
Jordan Scott’s film is consistently well-acted, particularly by Mss. Green (apparently pronounced ‘Grain’ in accordance with her Swedish, not Anglo, heritage), Valverde (superb and heartbreaking) and Temple (who is compelling throughout, despite her character’s arc being left vaguely incomplete at screenplay’s end). And Javier Navarette has created a beautiful musical score, one of the best I’ve heard in a while. Ms. Scott is the daughter of Ridley and the niece of Tony – whom, I’m sure, lent ample support as executive producers, as well as the services of veteran cinematographer John Mathieson. But this is undeniably a film with a woman’s heart, and Jordan Scott has most certainly made her own film here.
One more thing: I’m about to reveal a spoiler – I highly recommend the film either way, but if you’re a real stickler for that sort of thing, I’d discourage you from reading the text below. See this lovely and disturbing film for yourself, and maybe compare your conclusions with my few concerns to follow.
‘Cracks’ is part of the European Union Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film Center. It screens only once on Sunday, March 13th at 3:00 P.M.
SPOILER: One of the metaphorical ‘cracks’ that appears later in the film is the psychological disintegration of Miss Griffin, whose infatuation with one of the characters leads to the willful death of the girl at Miss G.’s hands. Within the internal logic of the movie, it makes disturbing but consistent sense. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the unfortunate reliance on the stereotypical frisson of the lust-crazed, child-corrupting lesbian murderer. Scott handles it as ‘tastefully’ as she possibly can, and Eva Green invests the role with real complexity and credibility - it’s light years away from Elizabeth Ashley’s psycho-turn in the rightly now-scarce ‘Windows,’ or Paul Verhoeven and Joe Eszterhas’s deeply cynical conception of Catherine Trammell in ‘Basic Instinct.’ But it will most certainly offend many feminist sensibilities, no matter how much intelligence and care has been lavished around it. Caveat emptor.
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