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Apollo Guide Review

When Picnic at Hanging Rock first appeared nearly a quarter century ago, it was at the vanguard of Australian new-wave cinema. Enigmatic and poetic, it retains much of its power today.

Picnic at Hanging Rock begins with Miranda, a sylph-like student in a turn-of-the-century Australian boarding school, telling us, What we are and what we seem to be is only a dream within a dream. Hence Peter Weir immediately establishes the film's surreal quality, while its determined slow-pace underscores the Dali-like mood and maintains the film's dreamscape.

The film is an apparently straightforward tale of a group of boarding school girls on a picnic in turn-of-the-century Australia. In an occult twist, three of the girls and one of their headmistresses disappear while scaling the massive and impressively phallic Hanging Rock. Just as the girls symbolically remove articles of clothing as they ascend the forbidden rocks, Weir leaves their fate purposefully unresolved, asking us to strip away the many layers of Victorian society to find the truth behind the veils. Some questions have answers, some haven't, says an elderly groundskeeper at one point. Oscar Wilde, himself a victim of Victorian society, delivered what might be a fitting epitaph for the girls, Society forgives the criminal, it never forgives the dreamer.

The film is not, however, without fault. The unfortunate caricature of a plump and shrill schoolgirl strikes a jangling chord. Tom, the young lad who spends the night on the rocks hoping to find the missing girls, is likewise a sketchily developed character whose overt emoting and desperate clambering on the rocks give him the aura of a romantic fool rather than a youthful hero. The soundtrack is of highly uneven quality. Zamfir's pan flutes are used very effectively to evoke a haunting mood, while passages from Mozart, Bach and Beethoven make vividly allusive appearances. However, the discordant piano/synthesizer stylings of Bruce Smeathon are anachronistic in this Victorian-era drama; furthermore, his music does not stand the test of time.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a remarkably beautiful film. Cinematographer Russell Boyd constructs each frame to capture the magnificence of the natural surroundings while also showcasing the minute detail of Victorian clothing, art and architecture. Rachel Roberts, as the stern yet fragile headmistress, moors the cast, while images of Anne-Louise Lambent as the beautiful sprite Miranda float on an ethereal film throughout.

********************

It's impossible to ignore the steamy, subverted, subtextual yumminess strewn about Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock -- unless, of course, your corset's strapped a tad too tight. Even then, the big, hot, throbbing metaphors for sexual awakening are hard to miss, with so many entendre-laden shots of imposing phallic rocks, hairdos, and blouse collars up to here, lithe and agile swans, and lithe and agile Victorian schoolgirls. It's 1900, late summer at the all-girl Appleyard College in Australia. Nubile young maids speak in purple prose and quote Edgar Allen Poe, and just like teens of anytime/anywhere, every absolute thing is cosmically connected and significant -- especially for the ones who are in love with each other, which they all seem to be. For a special St. Valentine's Day outing, the young women on the verge are taken to Hanging Rock. Four of the girls -- including the ethereal class knockout Miranda -- head up the mysterious rock for a somnambulant odyssey and disappear. The rest of the film explores our desperate need for understanding, closure, and the possibility that sometimes, some things just can't be explained. Or maybe they can. And if not explained, then at least linked to something sexy (Thank you, Dr. Freud!). Where were the girls led? What or who led them there? What happened when they got there? Why did they (gasp!) take their stockings off? The soundtrack, featuring the work of a pan flute master by the name of Zamfir, adds an extra toot of delicious creepiness, piping each time the enigmatic rock is shown.

Austin Chronicle


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