Cracks (I) (2009)

A look at the lives and relationships among girls at an elite boarding school.

Director:

Jordan Scott

Writers:

Ben Court (screenplay), Caroline Ip (screenplay),

Stars:

Eva Green, Juno Temple, María Valverde

1 nomination.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Eva Green	...	Miss G
Juno Temple	...	Di
María Valverde	...	Fiamma
Imogen Poots	...	Poppy
Ellie Nunn	...	Lily
Adele McCann	...	Laurel
Zoe Carroll	...	Rosie (as Zoë Carroll)
Clemmie Dugdale	...	Fuzzy
Sinéad Cusack	...	Miss Nieven
Helen Norton	...	Matron
Deirdre Donnelly	...	Miss Lacey
Barbara Adair	...	Miss Cairns
Alistair Rumble	...	Ferry Skipper
Kitty McLaughlin-Dunning	...	Small Dreg
Jonathan White	...	Shopkeeper

Storyline

A look at the lives and relationships among girls at an elite boarding school.

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Plot Keywords:

school | girl | boarding school | homesickness | lesbian interest | 

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Taglines:

Innocence isn't lost. It's taken.

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Genres:

Drama | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for some sexuality, nudity and a disturbing attack

Details

Official Sites:

Official site [France] Official site [United Kingdom]

Country:

UK Ireland Spain France Switzerland

Language:

English

Release Date:

18 March 2011 (USA)

Also Known As:

Sedução

Filming Locations:

Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$9,467 (USA) (18 March 2011)

Gross:

$17,595 (USA) (1 April 2011)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Antena 3 Films, Element Pictures, Future Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

104 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

First and, to date (2009), only joint venture of the Scott clan: Jordan Scott (writer-director) daughter of executive producer Ridley Scott and niece of executive producer Tony Scott.

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Goofs

Miss G. is seen smoking a filtered cigarette, something that was not really available at the time.

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Quotes

Miss G: The most important thing in life is desire. You can achieve anything you want. The world is yours for the taking. Nothing is impossible for you, my girls. All you need is to desire it.

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Connections

Featured in Ebert Presents: At the Movies: Episode #1.9 (2011)

User Reviews

'The most important thing in life is desire'

This is an amazingly brilliant film directed by the young Jordan Scott, who is female despite being called Jordan. She is the daughter (I almost said the son) of Ridley Scott and niece of Tony Scott, and after seeing this film I believe she has more artistic talent than both of them put together. It is simply incredible what she achieves in her portrait of an adult driven to madness by desire for a beautiful young creature, and her film really rivals Luchino Visconti's DEATH IN VENICE (1971) in my opinion, although in this film both the desired and the desirer are female, whereas in Visconti's film based on the Thomas Mann novella DER TOD IN VENEDIG, they were both male. (I once had to read the Mann novella in German and nearly fainted when I found a single sentence which was one and a half pages long with the main verb at the end! But that was Mann for you! 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. The school as seen in the film, a kind of Victorian Gothic pedagogical fantasy, apparently really exists as a structure somewhere in Ireland. But the geographical location is not really important, all that is needed for the story is the visual impression, the sea adjoining, the wild surrounding hills, and the isolation. This we certainly get, and the outside world barely exists in this hot house of passionate longings, schoolgirl intrigues, extreme homesickness verging on hysteria, and the coursing hormones of teenage girls who never get to see a boy. They are all in love with their mysterious and alluring mistress, 'Miss G.', played by the spectacularly weird and wonderful Eva Green (pronounced 'grain' because her father is Swedish and that is what they do there in Sweden during the long winter nights, they pronounce Green as 'grain'). Miss G. dresses exquisitely and has the finest imaginable artistic colour sense and personal style of dress and manner. The costumes in this film are a total knockout, designed by the super-talented Alison Byrne. A great deal of talent was also lavished on the sets and art direction. This is a real treat to the eye. As a production it is stunning in every respect. The fiery personality of Juno Temple (Juno was the Latin name for the queen of the gods, gedditt?, so of course she has to have a Temple) burns holes in the celluloid with her glowering stares of love, resentment, passion, jealousy, hatred, devotion, all those things mixed up which teenaged girls tend to have in such an unsorted state in their feverish psyches. She is a perfect screen match for the hyper-intense Eva Green. Juno is in love with Miss G. but Miss G. has no eyes for her anymore since the arrival of the super-cool, super-calm, super-beautiful Spanish dream dish, played by Spanish actress Maria Valverde, a silent brooding siren who drives Miss G. insane (literally, not just metaphorically). Despite the erotically charged atmosphere of this film, the director is too subtle to allow a single sexual scene. The most we see is Miss G. kissing Maria's neck, but that is enough to get Juno Temple so hysterical with jealousy that she precipitates a Twilight of the Goddesses, herself included. This is steamy stuff, very steamy stuff indeed, and all done without anybody touching anybody. Miss G. presides over a special collection of nymphets who form the school diving team. The team has never competed and the divers are pretty hopeless, but that all changes when the Spanish girl Fiamma turns up. She is an impeccably-dressed aristocrat of considerable sophistication, and all the girls hate her on sight because she is more beautiful and self-possessed than they are. Later, some of them soften. But Juno's main concern is that Fiamma has stolen Miss G.'s affections from her, and that is not to be tolerated. Fiamma suffers from serious asthma and has an inhaler, and, well, you can imagine the ensuing events. 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. As for Juno Temple, I do hope she can now sit up and speak again. It is all very harrowing, deeply disturbing, and so seething with suppressed but never overtly articulated sexuality that they must still be trying to cool down the camera in an ice bucket. As they say in the horrible tabloid newspapers: 'Corrrrr, what a scorcher!'