User Reviews

I have not been able to stop thinking about this film since viewing it for the first time yesterday afternoon. Quite remarkable. 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. This works both literally and metaphorically. The island, named 'Stanley Island' seems to me to have allusions to Miss. G's 'stories' of her travels around the world, particularly her stories of adventures in 'exotic' locales. 'Stanley' was the explorer who, upon meeting up with fellow explorer Livingstone, apparently said: 'Livingstone I presume.' He was also a self - mythologiser and - according to fellow explorer - a brutal racist.

Considering the self mythologising of Miss G. and her eager for information about the World outside of their 'Island' girls, this is entirely appropriate.

Words create truth. Words weave a truth.

While Miss G. tells her stories of her 'travels' and constructs her own World through her words and her audience of young girls, the girls do not yet have the experience or maturity to fully understand just what is going on. To me anyway, right from the beginning, this is a hint of the abuse to come. Children who have been abused, both physically and mentally, often speak much later in life of not having the words to articulate what was going on. The vulnerability of the girls is always there, even in some of the most beautifully filmed scenes - of which there are many.

Look out for the opening scenes where Di and Miss G. are in the rowing boat, Di is clearly smitten by her exotic teacher. The camera shots here tell us a lot. We see Miss G. through the misty eyes of a young, inexperienced, isolated girl - those early scenes of Miss G. are the creation of the girls' idolatry.

Watch how this breaks down. 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. We start seeing Miss. 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. She is talking to herself, distracted and clearly unstable.

This is how you and I would see her.

It is how Fiamma sees her. Her terror is real and totally understandable. She 'sees' clearly the unstable creature Miss G. actually is.

When the girls celebrate the Feast of St. Agnes, drinking and eating a midnight feast, someone is going to be the offering. St. Agnes is the Saint of Virgins. Fiamma, drunk, is led away by Miss G and raped. The young girls, once again knowing something isn't 'quite right' but not having the experience of maturity to articulate in their heads just what is happening.

The victim becomes the pariah, as Di cannot cope with what she has seen her previously adored teacher doing through the 'crack' in the door.

Di - short for Diana - is the Goddess of the Hunt, and she leads the girls through the woods chasing the asthmatic and traumatised Fiamma. Fiamma is the Virgin Martyr.

Di escapes the Island, clutching the map she drew for Fiamma earlier in the film. All of the young girls are victims of abuse to some extent. Their minds have been toyed with and manipulated. What is more, no adult seems to notice - or care.

Probably Miss G as well. We never learn her 'back story' but something has happened to her during her time at the school. When the older teacher points to an old school photograph of her, she also refers to some 'scandal' in her past. She has never left 'the Island' and probably never will. Again, literal and metaphorical.

I heartily recommend this film. It's study of abuse is subtle and all the more horrifying for it. It is a reminder of just how vulnerable we all were as children at school, boarding or day school. Before we had the words and worldliness to articulate the many different kinds of abuses there are in the World.

It is time to welcome a new member into the Scott family of filmmakers. 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 spoke of how growing up in a similar type setting is what led her to want to bring the tale to the big screen; the traditional atmosphere where the establishment itself becomes every student's world. The girls in the film speak about "home" yet never in detail or with a clear memory as to what they are missing. Many had been sent for a year or less only to find that they were trapped, sent away for the entirety of their youth. 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. Led by Juno Temple's Di Radfield, along with her cohort and lackey Poppy, played by Imogen Poots, the girls rule the school. Radfield most assuredly has a complex and need to be on top—she makes butter, in one instance, at risk of getting in trouble and then puts an underling in her place when the piece of bread given to her is lacking; she got the butter for them so she better have as much as she wants—and therefore becomes threatened when her kingdom is invaded by a Spanish princess. María Valverde's Fiamma has had some sort of relationship with a boy outside her class system and, as punishment to reform, been sent to the English school. 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. A threat to Radfield and Poppy, she is also the embodiment of all that Miss G hoped her life would be. 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. It's a fascinating role reversal and mirroring of idolatry when you watch Radfield's desire to please and ultimately become Miss G trumped by Miss G's own hope and want to do the same with Fiamma. Here is a grown woman filled with jealousy and vanity, becoming one of her students in mentality and action. The problem with this, however, is the fact that she is a person of power. Able to get her way due to the very fact she is counted upon to watch over these girls, an abuse of her job risks becoming a destruction of trust and a surefire way to destroy her own life as a result.

One must credit all involved for doing a bang-up job at enveloping the audience in this world; imbuing a sense of realism, bringing the past in front of our eyes. Besides the actresses named above, the entire rest of the cast are virtual unknowns, many of whom—the youngsters especially—are just local boarding school students themselves, brought on to perform. Three of the girls actually all went to the same school as well, so everyone involved knew what went into this closed off society; this world governed and policed by its own rules. Jordan Scott wanted it all to have a sense of fairy tale-like splendor, which is why she put it on the island setting she did. 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. There isn't much going on besides some adolescent girl bickering and jockeying for praise and approval with Miss G. By no means is it bad or boring, I just hoped for more conflict and weight, something that does come in towards the end, a little too late though. Once we begin to see how far both Radfield and Miss G will go to win the affections of the person they desire, the stakes do get higher and darker. The tension is ratcheted up and a Lord of the Flies type feel seeps in, amping up both the acting and visual style. Scott utilizes the forest and outdoors more here, blocking characters through trees in a foreboding way, letting camera angles and facial expressions speak rather than words. I realize that the opening hour and a half or so is needed to allow for the stellar final twenty minutes, but maybe the danger could have been alluded to earlier. What first just seemed to be conflict between the girls doesn't open up to the possibility of their teacher's inclusion until much later on. Ms. Scott definitely has a bright future ahead of her if Cracks is any indication. Much more than the familial pedigree that precedes her, I believe she will be standing on her own as an artist very soon.

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

Tense and suspenseful, Cracks is a well-paced, carefully crafted period piece. It is about the consequences of creating insular environments which breed mean-spirited hierarchies and draw ill-motivated authority figures. Situations in which the authority figures empower, reward and smile upon petty tyrants because they share the same deviant mindset and orientation.

In this offbeat tale of hatred and hazing, the cloistered children of favored society engage in cruel conformity at an all-girls' school in rural 1934 England. The story focuses on an elite Brody set of girls who comprise the academy's token diving team. The girls are mentored by their vapid instructor and swim coach, Miss G. (Green). (An apparent tribute to Muriel Sparks's novel and film, The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie.) None of the students are really happy or normal. They are the issue of the minor gentry. Their absentee parents unceremoniously dump them off at St. Mathilda, and never return. Disposing of their kids frees the adults to pursue their lavish lifestyles. And the girls know it. The polite rejection, combined with a stifling parochial environment turns the kids into seething stew-pots of repressed self-doubt and resentment.

A titled Spanish heiress arrives. She is a precocious and cultured patrician. Of course the other girls retaliate. Fiamma (Valverde) becomes a magnet for their jealousy, licentiousness and rage. While most of the girls lament that their parents seem to have forgotten about them and will never bring them home again, privileged Fiamma is vocally confident that her stretch will be short. Fiamma enjoys lavish gifts and delicacies from home. She shares them with her classmates while regaling them with wondrous tales of travel experiences and folklore. This only make things worse.

Di Rutfield (Temple), the swim team captain, is at once overshadowed and out-performed. Fiamma outflanks her socially, culturally, intellectually, and most devastatingly of all, athletically. Di no longer sets the bar by which the other girls are measured. To the contrary, she must now measure up to it.

More perilously, Di has lost her favored status as the apple of Miss G's eye. Coveted, courted and pampered by the girls' diving coach, Di was bonded to her by a barely suppressed. mutual undercurrent of romantic and sexual high voltage. Upon Fiamma's debut, Miss G's attentions shift to the enigmatic new enchantress.

My own snobby boarding school wasn't Catholic, and it was well enough administered that there was a minimum of clique exclusiveness, hazing and cruelty. But oh my, do I ever recognize the personality of Miss G. She is a tortured closet lesbian, perpetually titillated by her juvenile charges. A bundle of insecurities and self-perceived inadequacies, Miss G. fortifies her ego by reveling in the matriarchal power or her position. She is quietly desperate, dangling on a smoldering time-fuse, and primed for an angry episode of sexually frustrated, catastrophic hysteria at the first hint of a substantial challenge to her authority.

Damningly, Miss G. is also a fraud who recites adventures from Mary Kingsley's Travels To West Africa (1897), claiming the experiences to be her own. Having been at St. Mathilda continuously since she was a schoolgirl, Miss G. convinces her students that she's a feisty, liberated explorer. Fiamma really has traveled however, and Miss G resents it. Gifted, independent, rebellious by the standard of the day, it's obvious Fiamma is more wordily and educated than Miss G.

Miss G. loves Fiamma, and she hates her. She wants to alternately kiss and slap the girl. Miss G. is drowning in a swirling infusion of hormonal captivation and intimidated insecurity. She veils her own closeted sexuality and verboten urges for Fiamma behind a tenuous mask of low key hostility. Churning under her increasingly strained visage lurks a poisonous cocktail of spite, infatuation, and abject lust. Tensions amplify. Fiamma, Di, and Miss G. square off. Together they plunge into a sensational maelstrom of bitter jealously, taboo coitus, madness, and salacious mayhem.

As in William Golding's novel Lord Of The Flies, there's an irony at play in Cracks. In Golding's work, which has inspired several films, schoolboys are sent away from England to protect them from war violence. Yet they promptly do battle with each other upon being shipwrecked. Becoming utter barbarians, they revert to the trees within hours of marooning.

In Cracks the girls study Christian values, social and intellectual refinement, self control and etiquette. When Fiamma smashes their authoritarian hierarchy, the schoolgirls' cultural and humanist graces evaporate. Collectively, they atavistically plunge to the lowest common denominator of bilious rivalry, sexual jealousy and brutality.

Cracks carries strong shadings of the Muriel Sparks novel and film, The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie, but it takes a dark departure. Tense, suspenseful, Cracks' gorgeous cinematography and top tier production values accentuate its thoughtfully plotted storyline. The result is a salacious firecracker of a picture! Cracks is a must-see experience for fans of such films as Heavenly Creatures, Loving Annabelle, and Picnic At Hanging Rock.

A carefully made, intelligent, powerful film that makes you wonder, among other things, why director Jordan Scott (the daughter of Ridley) has not had the opportunity to make anything else since 2009. It is a film that demands your attention: just when you think you may know where it is heading, it turns the other way. At first, it appears to be the story of a non-conformist teacher inspiring her devoted students; then, it seems to be about the jealously of the teacher's favorite student when she feels she's in danger of being overshadowed by a new arrival; then it looks like the teacher admires the new arrival because she has so much in common with her; and finally, it turns into something else, something darker, leading to a tragedy that has a real impact on the viewer. Exceptional performances, appropriate musical scoring and beautiful photography add to the experience. *** out of 4.

I am a big fan of Eva Green, so jumped at a chance to see a flick of hers I hadn't seen before. The story is engaging, and well acted on all parts, but it is not a tale of a consensual affair, and had Eva Green's character been played by a man instead, I believe the synopsis would be much different, as would the average review. This is a story about a teacher who becomes obsessed with an approx. 13 year old student and molests her in her sleep, not an affair. This is a story about child molestation. There is little to go on by the cover, one would assume that the student is late high school age at least and had consented and been seduced. No. Not at all. Were someone who had been molested to see this movie without knowing its true nature, I think it could be traumatic.

This movie has a definite edge to it, but in all honesty the edge is somewhat blunted. From the beginning, the situation just doesn't seem right. The movie is set in a girls' boarding school many years ago. The school is isolated, apparently on an island off the English coast. 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. There's a closeness to the relationship, and particularly with Di (Juno Temple) - the team's captain. The relationship is strained by the arrival of a beautiful and talented newcomer named Fiamma (Maria Valverde). Fiamma is especially isolated. She's from Spain and so is completely out of her element, she comes from some type of aristocratic family and so there may be class issues and she immediately becomes Miss G's new pet - much to the dismay of Di, who had previously held that role. There was that degree of edginess in all this, but not much more. Things just weren't quite right. The movie picks up and becomes quite unsettling when the girls hold their "midnight feast" a little more than halfway through.

Fiamma - having taken part in the feast - gets drunk. Miss G discovers her passed out and takes her out of the dorm and back to her own room. 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. Whether anything more than what's portrayed on screen happens we don't know, of course, nor do we know for sure how long Fiamma is in the room with Miss G. The incident, however, sparks the movie and leads up to tragic results.

Unfortunately, I thought this fizzled out a bit at the end. An edgy movie didn't end with too much of an edge. What stood out for me was the conviction of the headmistress that whatever tragedy had happened, what mattered was not the truth, but protecting the school's reputation. It's OK. Edgy at times, yes, but with an edge that's a bit blunt. (5/10)

Filmmakers and many reviewers do not want to tell you what this movie is about. Too bad; honesty might have led to greater success.

Set in an upper-class English all-girl boarding school in 1934, this is

about the deadly and tragic impact a lesbian teacher has on the children put in her charge. How her advances on her victim are rejected and how she deceives the other girls to turn vengeance on her victim.

This teacher has stayed-behind-to-teach because the teaching occupation provides a field of opportunity to seduce students. Quite like Penn State, revealed just recently.

CRACKS is 180 degrees in contrast to "The History Boys" -- a film and play in which Homosexual groping of students (as in Penn State) is portrayed as jolly fun for the teachers, and a gay teacher who does not molest his students is mocked, as are the school officials who seek to end the child abuse.

In CRACKS, the teacher who abuses her students is unquestionably presented as evil, and nothing in the storyline excuses her actions; nor should it.

Jordan Scott has done a fine job with good acting and character development. The cinematography is superb.

Directed and performed. Flawless.

Except for the fact that this really is a film about pedophilia. If the abusive 'quirky' woman teacher had been a man this would never have seen the light of whatever device you use to watch.

It is exquisite and complex.

Determining how to rate it I found it be complex as well.

The central issue of the film is ultimately the sexual abuse of a young girl rendered helpless by alcohol. Raped by her quirky teacher and then murdered by her fellow schoolmates, in thrall to said quirky teacher, to cover it up.

At issue for this viewer is the beautification of it all. How does one rate that . . .

I haven't fully grasped the theory behind the movie yet I liked it ,The film evinces through the screen the teenagers' credulity and innocence versus their susceptibility to envy and evil traits , if you ever wondered how insane life would look like if one "especially child" trapped inside religious institution where you have no clue about the real outside world except through the eyes of a teacher whom herself been raised at the same institution doesn't know much apart from what she've read off fairytales stories , everyone's life turned upside down including the teacher who will be exposed at the end, when aristocrat newcomer girl join the school and the beloved , looked up to , miss G fell in love with her , I'm convinced she sees a reflection of herself on her only if she hadn't been confined at that boarding school it's really different kind of movie go watch it now .

The unbearable cringe is incessant. It's about a beautiful female teacher who becomes obsessed with a pretty foreign female student. It's clear Ms G has some serious issues. There is also another female student who is jealous of the foreign student because she is no longer Ms G's pet. It's a really weird obsession triangle. For obvious reasons this movie was extremely intense. It didn't really teach me anything nor did I find it profound but the acting was good.

You'd expect this movie to look good, coming as it does courtesy of the Scott brothers (Tony and Ridley produced it) and young Jordan Scott who has made a competent and pretty result. Beyond that it goes downhill quickly.

A story from the lesbian end of the Mills & Boon shelf is full of public school cliché and a love of style over substance. The acting is at times over-wrought and at other times the script is laughably predictable. The girls' characters range from the beautiful princess (literally) to the overweight clumsy one and their relationships follow arcs that one can see coming from miles away. As someone else mentioned, the bakery scene is slightly baffling, unless one sees it as a madness/agoraphobic moment. Echoes of Lord of the Flies don't help either as that was a superior product in every way.

Got two feeling during watching this movie. Engaging and irritating.

Engaging because the character miss g was a little bit mysterious. Is she good or bad? What is she going to do next? This curiousity made me follow this movie til the end.

Irritating because i felt these characters only made life miserable for the newcomer student fiamma. I know if they didn't do that there was no story to tell. I think i was just not in the mood for this movie. I felt terribly sorry for fiamma. Other student and the teacher(miss g) was just mean to her. The character miss g was a disgusting psychopath and deserve to be punish in the end(which was not) The story was set in 20s or 30s England. But the rules and legulations, the student behaviours etc werenot believable.

I have to admit at first glance i thought it might be about a love traingle between 3 women and end in a little bit tragidy nothing more. I was totally very wrong.

Good things about this movie: Beautiful scenarios Some scene was quite beautiful. I was particulary like the night swimming scene. It was bizarre of course(who want to go swimming naked at night) but beautifully done.

Actors's acting.