Cracks

Plot synopsis:
Set in the 1930s in a strict elite British boarding school called St Mathilda's, the story centers on a clique of girls who idolize their enigmatic diving instructor, Miss G (Eva Green) (in the film, we learn that Miss G had been a student at the same school where she now works and, in fact, may have even continued on at the school after she graduated). Di Radfield (Juno Temple) has a crush on Miss G, and is the firm favourite and ringleader of her group. When a beautiful Spanish girl named Fiamma Coronna (María Valverde) arrives at the school, Miss G's focus is shifted away from the other girls. It becomes a triangle: Miss G gets increasingly obsessed with Fiamma, Fiamma is disturbed by Miss G and also openly disgusted by the teacher's hypocrisies and deceptions, and Di is terribly jealous and makes Fiamma's life hell. In a very telling scene in the film that clearly highlighted Miss G's deceptions, Miss G (who claimed to be a world traveller to her "girls") goes to a nearby parochial town to buy some provisions. She is visibly upset by this trip and after buying her provisions and drawing the unwanted attention of some local louts, she returns to the school in, it would seem, a near panic. The bullying culminates in Di physically throwing Fiamma out of the school but, as she is unable to return to Spain as she hoped, Fiamma ends up back at the school later that night.
When Fiamma is eventually found, the two girls make the first steps towards friendship, and at the following dorm party they all get a bit drunk, and Fiamma faints. Miss G takes her to her own room. Then Miss G kisses her and rapes her while she is passed out; Di witnesses this through the room door, which was left ajar, and then flees.
The next morning, Fiamma is visibly upset, Miss G equally so as she runs around after her. Di is broody, and eventually tells the rest of her gang that Fiamma seduced Miss G. Fiamma presumably tells Miss G that she will report the molestation to the teachers, and horrified, Miss G realises her career will be over. She in turn manipulates Di's affection for her into anger. She says that Fiamma will make up lies about her molesting her (even though it was true) and plan to get her kicked out of school. Di absolutely refuses to allow this to happen. The confrontation between Di's gang and Fiamma turns ugly as Fiamma declines to answer Di's vicious questions and tries to explain what really happened, hinting at Miss G's lies and character defects. Fiamma runs into the forest as things become more violent, but the girls catch up with her and, under Di's leadership, beat her up with their fists and sticks. Fiamma starts to have an asthma attack, and the girls stop, terrified. They run to get help, and Di runs into Miss G (who had been watching the beating and the chase that ensued quietly and with no attempt to stop the beating), who says she'll stay with Fiamma, and directs Di to go get a teacher.
In the forest, Miss G, alone with Fiamma, refuses to give Fiamma her inhaler and calmly watches her die. Di returns just in time to see Miss G placing the inhaler in Fiamma's lifeless hand, and that's when she realizes the truth.
Later, Di tells the other girls what happened and, united, they confront Miss G. They are powerless officially, but they quit the diving team and symbolically turn in their sashes. The headmistress refuses to acknowledge the school's culpability, and seems only concerned with the school's reputation, but releases Miss G from her duties.
The final scene has Di leaving the school to explore the world, as both Fiamma and Miss G had spoken of doing, whilst Miss G, fired from the school, goes to the local village and finds a small room she can live in, presumably closing herself away for the rest of her life. In a scene that perhaps allows the viewer a better understanding of Miss G's very complex personality, we see her put her few personal possessions on her bedside table. She puts one item there and then quickly removes it to make room for another item. After that, she counts the items to make sure that there are only five. The viewer is then reminded that when Fiamma arrived at the school, in the dorm room, Di had told her that only five personal items could be displayed on her night table at one time. The audience then realizes Miss G is as much a victim of the institutionalized setting she grew up in (she was perhaps like many of the girls at the school "dumped" there and basically forgotten about by her family) as Fiamma was her victim.

Tags: murder, storytelling

Review:
I feel that I spoil quite a lot saying more, so enough said.This film is very well played by all actors, including the young girls, directed beautifully and using both impressive scenery and great costumes.
I am told children are like that, so I should have probably ignored that some of the girls there were hot as hell and considered them all well under age.Eva Green played a complex character, easy to sympathize with at times, easy to loathe at others.
I wasn't familiar with anyone in the cast except Eva Green from Dark Shadows, who I didn't really have an opinion of either way and I'm not a fan of boarding school movies of any sort, but I watched it anyway.
Eva Green, as Miss G, was completely captivating and I could picture myself having a school girl crush on her when I was in high school...or heck, maybe even now.
The way I see it, In my opinion, this film is so smart, intriguing, fascinating and so beautifully executed that not only will stay with you long afterwards but also will make you talk, comment about it with others, you know, and that's just simply the kind of movie I love to watch but unfortunately, there aren't enough films like this.
One can easily tell Miss G's attraction, confusion and panic; Di's jealousy and Fiamma's emotional change throughout the film.
Delayed gratification!) This film is set in the surreal setting of a remote girl's boarding school on 'Stanley Island' (wherever that is, as we are not told) in the year 1934.
Miss G's steady personality disintegration, under the influence of her stifled lesbian passions, and her descent into a kind of sleep-walking insanity over her obsession with Fiamma, are so brilliantly and horrifyingly portrayed by Eva Green that we wonder if she had to go to a sanitarium for some months to recover after making this intense film.
The mood is one of Gothic evil where rich young girls participate in the cloistered rigid education imposed by the matrons of the school -Miss Nieven (Sinéad Cusack), Matron (Helen Norton), and Miss Lacey (Deirdre Donnelly) - whose chief concern is to guard the reputation of the school at all costs, and lightened only by the presence of the swimming/diving coach Miss G (Eva Green) whom the girls admire for her exotic beauty, worldliness, supposed travel around the world, and her possessiveness of her brood.
One of the girls, Di (Juno Temple in a brilliant performance), is the team captain and the apparent favorite of Miss G - until the sudden arrival of a beautiful Spanish girl Fiamma (María Valverde) who tends to set herself apart form the rest of the claque (Di, Poppy (Imogen Poots), Lily (Ellie Nunn), Fuzzy (Clemmie Dugdale), Laurel (Adele McCann) and Rosie (Zoë Carroll).
Eva Green manages to make Miss G a fascinating character and her gradual obsession with Fiamma and the direction that takes her is a very fine performance.
It was nice watching the characters all develop and start to accept Fiamma.I read the book after watching the movie and there were a few things that had been changed - the ending in particular.
You will like the movie ..even if the film is rather thematic and arty..Photography is good, particularly the diving shots of the girls in the pristine lake..
Maria Valverde as Fiamma looks cute and has done justice to the role and so has Juno Temple as Di..It is to be understood that movies with such themes cannot have a happy ending..
is a teacher (played by Eva Green, notable in The Golden Compass) who gives special attentions to the six girls who are on her "diving team".
Since the agents in this drama are adolescent girls and a teacher who (we shall discover) has emotional issues, each action results in unexpected reactions that portend serious consequences.As in Lord of the Flies, we have a subculture that encourages anti-social behavior, set within the larger culture of the school, which is in many ways, a prison (located on an island).
The rules no longer apply." A teacher (Green) at a boarding school for girls tries to teach them about real life.
When a new girl arrives at the school and takes Miss G's (Green) attention from her, Di (Temple) becomes jealous.
The girls admire their diving teacher Miss "G" Gribben (Eva Green).
Wonderful Coming Of Age For Young Boarding School Girls With Storyline That Changes As The Movie Unfolds.
All looks good on the surface right up to the point where another young girl comes to the school and suffers being the outsider of the already formed group.
This movie is a suspenseful masterpiece and coming-of-age period drama, with slow tension building to a grim climax.In Cracks, you will see several youth lost and forgotten at a countryside boarding school, idolizing the "fearless" teacher/swimming coach Miss G.
It only takes one outsider to come along to shift the balance in the girls, and trigger in their mentor a slow descent into obsession and jealousy.Miss G emanates confidence, power, and intensity, but the film masterly reveals over time that all is not as it seems.
Her performance alone is always captivating..along w the supporting actresses this movie was def a great watch and I went in not expecting or knowing much about it..it's based on an strict female boarding school in England during the 1930s and focuses on the relationships between a teacher and her charges and how they so desperately seek affection, attention and acceptance and especially the conflicts that arise during the arrival of a new charge..it gives you a great artistic cinematic imagery of how deep and far one can go for desire, obsession, jealousy, and the sense of belonging.
Unlike some other reviewers, I feel this movie is less about a female version of "Lord of the Flies" and more about the intense contest of wills between the brilliant and beautiful aristocratic new girl, played by María Valverde, and teacher, Miss G, played by Eva Green.Miss G is the social climbing teacher whose fabulous stories are largely fake.
Good cast, beautiful location setting, and a trite, trashy script that exploits the usual salacious imaginings about all-girl schools and the women teachers there.
On the negative side, I kept thinking about things that felt not quite right.The film feels long and a bit predictable in the second half, but the character dynamics are interesting and the cinematography is beautiful.I was particularly impressed by Juno Temple.
CRACKS is an intense psychological drama set in a boarding school for girls.
Yet at the same time this low budget production has a sheen of quality to it, an air of lyricism that makes it watchable.Eva Green headlines as the seductive teacher who's a subject of affection for many of the girls in her care.
The rest of the cast are fine, although Maria Valverde is never quite as sympathetic as she should be.CRACKS is a slow moving film in which little really happens until the end, and yet there is some suspense here, as well as drama.
It tells the story about a woman named Miss Gribben who teaches a diving team consisting of six girls at a boarding school in Stanley Island, England.
Distinctly and subtly directed by British filmmaker Jordan Scott, this quietly paced fictional tale which is narrated from multiple viewpoints, draws a dense and mindful portrayal of an aristocratic Roman Catholic girl from Spain with a breathing condition named Fiamma Coronna who after having been transferred to a new school upsets the sacred dynamic within a closely knit group of girls named Di, Laurel, Lilly, Rosie, Fuzzy and Poppy and becomes the apple of the eye of their revered and matriarchal teacher.
While notable for it's naturalistic and atmospheric milieu depictions, sterling cinematography by English cinematographer John Mathieson, production design by production designer Ben Scott, costume design by costume designer Allison Byrne and use of colors and light, this dialog-driven and narrative-driven story about worshiping, obsession, rivalry, education and collectivism where a teacher emphasizes desire and poetry as essential life values for her admiring students whom she has created a utopian universe for and who are as confined as she is, depicts three merging and internal studies of character and contains a timely score by composer Javier Navarrete.This prominently atmospheric, conversational and increasingly intriguing period drama triangle from the late 2000s which is set at a remote religious boarding school for girls called St. Mathilda on an island in England during a summer in the early 1930s and where an unwelcomed newcomer with a secretive background who sees through her free-minded new teacher's romantic fairy-tales becomes her object of desire and rival after she starts shattering her illusions and the power grip she has on the other girls, is impelled and reinforced by it's cogent narrative structure, substantial character development, subtle continuity, cultured and playful characters, abrupt editing, distinct realism, diving scenes, comment by Miss Nieven : "But you must accept that this was an act of God, " and the understated and involving acting performances by French actress Eva Green, Spanish actress Maria Valverde, Irish actress Sinéad Cusack and English actresses Juno Temple and Imogen Potts.
The emphasis on dialogue and character development makes for a pleasant surprise and is not something you typically expect from a modern day thriller.I thought Eva Green delivered the stand out performance of the film as the mysterious and unpredictable Miss G.
And when story got slow and little bit boring, I kept watching it with my eyes wide open because of beautiful cinematography: scenes of nature (especially water), flowers; subliminal messages 'bout transience of time and rather life than death.
First class cast did a great job of convincing the audience in credibility of their theatrics, and we all could have empathized with any of a girl in that private school - luckier with Fiamma, less lucky with other, poorer girls, and some of us (I'd say most of us) with a teacher, dreamer with her unfulfilled dreams which she weaves of stories from realistic fairies from all around the world.
Ridley's daughter Jordan Scott has arrived with Cracks, a story about a London boarding school and the activities that occur within, based on a novel by Sheila Kohler.
Scott really has a handle on the material and gets the aesthetic just right, from the environment, the costumes, the attitudes, and the cliquish superiority complex that comes with an isolated upbringing where your teacher is queen and you her conduit to the little people.It starts by giving an idea of what life is like at the school through the diving team.
Coached by Eva Green's Miss G, an ex-pupil that stayed on upon graduation, the team has a hierarchy corresponding to the ages of the girls.
In her mind it's just a warning and will only last a short time, but she soon finds out that is what all the other girls, there for years, thought at the start too.Fiamma is the catalyst that shakes things up and turns the school's tenuous equilibrium upside-down.
Wanting to be the idol of the girls, maybe even staying to teach because it was the only way she could pretend to have lived out her dreams, the stories she tells of her worldly travels soon are proved false by the fact Fiamma can recite the exact words, having read the books Miss G steals from.
Feeling as though in an environment like New Zealand or some other exotic locale, she was able to transport these girls to a new world, one where they were separated from reality and able to live for each other without foreign interference  until Fiamma's arrival of course.While the beginning of the film is effective due to its period authenticity and performances, the story itself is somewhat sleight.
As always, plenty of reviewers have provided first class descriptions of the actual story already, so I will cut to the chase.For me this film deals with several themes: 'When I was a child, I thought as a child' (Rudyard Kipling 'If')It is no accident that the young girls who are the foci of this tale are living in an isolated English boarding school, ON AN ISLAND.
When Fiamma arrives from Spain, a young girl who is well traveled and has experienced life in the wider world, the 'cracks' of the title begin to appear.
G through Fiamma's eyes, she looks a bit more 'crazed', a bit more mad.Also, watch out for the scenes when Miss.
G is not in the school grounds - perhaps the most telling scene in the film for me, which genuinely chilled me, was when Miss G goes into the little village to buy a few things.
At first glance "cracks" appears to be a not to well constructed drama about boarding school life for girls in the 1930's, show casing exactly what you would expect from such a drama, the cliques the language, the strict teaching codes and the unruly (for the time) girls.Although at this point the story isn't all that interesting it is worth noting that the Acting from Mrs G (Eva Green) and Di (Juno Temple) is excellent.As the film progresses and Fiamma (María Valverde) is introduced things actually take a turn for the better.
Observing the Cliques reaction to the foreign intruder, a notably pretty, well dressed and talented intruder, is extremely entertaining.The switching of loyalties and the revelations of flaws with in the perfect "miss G" begin to captivate the audience and eventually i will admit I was quite involved in the story.This film is definitely worth a watch if you have a free afternoon to indulge the more slow paced side of cinema.7/10.
It's the story of a group of girls at a boarding school in 1934 who are connected by being part of a swim team headed by a charismatic teacher.
The film takes time and care to show how many of the girls have been sent to the school by rich parents who simply don't want to deal with them.
In a scene near the end, after the tragedy, the students read a letter from Miss G which is so devoid of remorse or culpability that you are left to wonder if she had any honourable intentions as their teacher.The film is showing how vulnerable neglected children are to manipulation and abuse.
This action was catalyzed by Miss G's last interaction with her; one where she lost some of the team's respect ("Since Fiamma knows what's best, let her take the reigns!").This narrative is a classic example of an established social order turned upside down with the arrival of a newcomer (think 'Mean Girls'), and the school will never be the same for them.
Eva Green plays Miss G., a sophisticated and at that time quite liberal diving team coach at an all girls school.
Her lesbian attractions to the girls are all subtle and downplayed, almost non-existent.That all changes with the arrival of a new student, the aristocratic and beautiful Fiamma, who soon has Miss G all worked up.
Without showing you a single sexual scene you know the sexually supercharged Miss G had her way with the young girl.
The young girls who admired and loved the diving coach begin to look at her in a new light.The ending is surprising, sad, and shocking.I almost gave up on the film a few times at the slow parts, but was glad I didn't.
The movie is set in a girls' boarding school many years ago.
The school has a somewhat strange diving team (the point is eventually made that this team never competes against any other team) led by an attractive and charismatic coach known as Miss G (played by Eva Green.) Miss G's relationship with the team is more than just a student-teacher or coach-diver relationship.
It's a bit unclear exactly what happens at this point, but it seems clear that Miss G lives up to the lesson she taught her team early on in the movie ("the most important thing in life is desire.") We know that at the very least she molests the drunken Fiamma.
Then watch it again as like most really good films it withholds at lot of its pleasure for multiple viewings.So here are a few thoughts from my twisted mind: You only begin to understand what the screenwriter/director is trying to say when you realize that the story is being told entirely from Diana's (Juno Temple) point-of-view and the other characters are simply plot devices to illustrate Diana's coming of age story.
The fatal attraction of Miss "G" to Fiamma (Maria Valverdeis) is almost a Hitchcock McGuffin, in that it provides a lot of character motivation but is ultimately just a plot device.Interestingly the climatic scene comes well before the end of the film.
I thought the casting was brilliant - Juno Temple was the perfect fit for the unique character of 'Di', as was Eva Green who played the extraordinary and inspiring 'Miss G'.
Eva Green's performance as Miss G is simply impeccable - she starts as a vibrant, vivacious, confident teacher whom is admired and loved by everyone.
The film does not show long-winded scenes of Miss G and Fiamma's physical activity, but in my opinion it does not need to.
At an elite British boarding school, a group of girls idealize their mysterious swim teacher Miss G (Eva Green).
Miss G tells the girls stories of her adventures before she decided to become a teacher.
Di (Juno Temple), the leader of the group, and Miss G's right hand girl, has a teenage crush on her incredibly attractive teacher.
But when Fiamma (Maria Valverde), a new student from Spain, joins the group of girls, Miss G becomes infatuated with Fiamma.
She is a highly intelligent young women who has not been held captive in a boarding school her whole life, and Fiamma starts to notice that Miss G is not who she seems to be.