By Susan Polk

Heavenly Creatures is not a film for the faint of heart. Based on the true story of two New Zealand teenagers who, fearing separation, bashed one of their mothers to death in 1954 in order to try to save their obsessive relationship from being torn apart. Far from being a simple true-to-life horror film, Heavenly Creatures goes into great detail as to how the mechanics of dysfunction operate, and how such a relationship can progress from being merely unhealthy to deadly with the proper combination of circumstances.

The story dips in and out of reality, alternately exploring the girls' growing friendship and the fantasy world they create and inhabit as projections of their subconcious minds. At first the friendship seems fairly normal - both ***'s lower-class parents and ***'s intellectual, uppercrust family approve of the girls finally finding a soulmate. As the escapist behavior increases and the friendship takes on lesbian overtones, however, both sets of parents attempt to separte the two and are met with frightening ferocity. Most adamant is ***'s mother, who (to make things all the worse) reviles her daughter for having lost her virginity to a male boarder. So the seed is planted - the girls' hatred for the world which doesn't understand them and the parents who seek to hold judgement over them is focused on **'s mother.

As their imaginary kingdom expands, so do the actions and morals of those who inhabit it, and in this way the girls come to grips with the concept of murder in the corporeal world. The inevitable is set in motion, and the tale heads pell-mell to it's horrible conclusion, which only comes in the final moments of the film, the act itself not being so important as the reason why. This is not as clear as it one would like it to be, although ***'s motivations are fairly well spelled out, given that her parents left her in the Bahamas for five years while she recovered from TB - a solid case of fear of abandonment and parental resentment if ever there was one. ***'s psychology is not so clear, as she was introverted but had a stable and loving family, and although hormones and supressed emotions can certainly do a lot of damage, just what threw the final switch remains a mystery.

The film is lovingly photographed, and careful attention is given to the fact that the friendship did indeed begin as an innocent one. But given the known outcome, the spectre of death shows itself early on, and the sense of forboding will make your blood run cold.