REVIEWS

TIME OUT REVIEW

Australian.  based on a real-life murder case that scandalised New Zealand in the 50's.  Peter Jacksons movie marks a welcome change from the slpatter of Bad Taste and Braindead.  rather than focus on the final act of violence, the film explores the overheated encounter between two teenagers: clever, cocky Juliet (Winslet), from a well-to-do English family, and pudgy, initially more intospective Pauline (Lynskey), a working class girl.  The pairs obsessions with books, Mario Lanza, the fearsome Orson Welles and other 'saints' leads them to creat their own 'Fourth World', a medieval fantasy involving royal romance and bloody intrigue; but when thier parents decide that the friendship is 'wayward' and 'unhealthy', the girls terror at the prospect of seperation impels daydreams to invade reality, with deadly results.  Jacksons film is distinguished by the intensity of the girls secretive relationship.  If the busy camera movements used to convey the heady exhileration of their early encounters are irritating, the sense of claustrophobic immersion in private mysteries is palpable.  Acted with conviction, and directed and written with febrile vibrancy.