True-crime story, out of New Zealand, about two early-adolescent schoolgirls who form an "unwholesome attachment" and who bludgeon one of their mothers to death when the two of them are about to be forcibly pried apart. Directed with enormous energy by Peter Jackson, of Dead-Alive fame or infamy, it is neither a very serious treatment of the case, aiming to weigh the human cost of it, nor a very deep treatment, aiming at psychological elucidation. The recklessness and tactlessness of it, almost John Waters-y in impertinence, seem to put it on the side of, or at least in the spirit of, the passionate teens. (And yet there is no attempt to line up their enshrined hero-figures with latter-day tastes: Mario Lanza, James Mason, Mel Ferrer, and "absolutely not Orson Welles, the most hideous man alive.") The adults, as well as the Fifties time-period, come in for conventional caricature: "Homosexuality!" -- the pontificator's mouth fills the entire screen -- "I agree, Mrs. Rieper, it's not a very pleasant word." But although the movie might not do justice to the "real story," it does justice to its own story. The montages, the voice-over diary excerpts ("real" ones), and the excursions into a make-believe universe (peopled with god-awful lifesized clay figures) prove to be highly efficient storytelling devices, propelling the action forward by leaps and bounds, and bypassing the brick-by-brick tedium of the conscientious nonfictionist. And even then the fateful dynamics of the situation -- the connect-the-dots constellation of disaffection, fantasy, escape, rebellion, murder -- are completely persuasive. The performances of the two young unknowns, Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet, do nothing to undermine that, particularly the performance of Lynskey, a fierce frowner and chin-tucker, suggestive of a girl who has just experienced her first period and isn't at all sold on the "miracle" of it. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd