"Heavenly Creatures"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses and reviews the 1994 film, "Heavenly Creatures," by Peter Jackson. It discusses the plot of the film and discusses the visuals and the images conveyed in the opening sequences and how they contribute greatly to the underlying sense of deviance and the nature of the lesbian relationship at the heart of the film. The paper specifically focuses on the relationship of the two girls in the film.

From the Paper:

"Indeed, the way the two girls move together once they meet suggests a growing obsession that is not entirely explained by reference to shared experiences or to agreement on how wonderful Mario Lanza is. Throughout the film, there is a strong sense of a deeper attraction that cannot be explained except in sexual terms, even if the girls themselves never think in that way and if those around them also do not see the meaning of this attraction. Queer deviance in that sense has to be imposed by later observers, meaning the audience for the film, because that leap in thinking was not taken by the society in which the girls lived. What the film suggests is that this leap would have been made had people known more about the situation at the time."

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