What's wrong? Nothing. Butterflies.
(Xan) Hormones rage and friendships falter in Carol Morley's pungent tale of an epidemic of fainting
that strikes an English girls' school in the late 1960s. Game of Thrones graduate Maisie
Williams leads the charge, prostrating herself in the classroom and the gardens, and implicitly
inviting everyone else to live the dream as well.
Girls are such a mystery, aren't they, Peter? (Peter) They certainly are to me, and I think
their mystery is converted into something very fruitful here. I liked it and admired
it very much. I think it is fascinating and unclassifiable. It's strange, it's tapped
into a certain kind of elusive Englishness, which reminded me of lots of different things.
It reminded me of albums by Nick Drake and Sid Barrett, and John Millais's portrait of
Ophelia. It's also obviously to some extent inspired by Peter Weir's Picnic and Hanging
Rock but, I think, translated very interestingly to a very English setting. And it plays with
genre, it's not quite clear whether it's supposed to be a psychological thriller or a psychological
horror or a psychological drama or a comedy or a tragic comedy or all of the above or
none of the above. I found it endlessly stimulating, I could very happily sit down and watch it
again. I thought it was great. (Xan) I liked it a lot, but all of the influences
that Peter was saying, you could almost see the cuffs and the hemlines showing on it.
It felt it was all kind of clogged in there a bit.
(Catherine) Yeah, it was sort of a bit Peter Strickland, with nature and sex and quick
shots of that. (Xan) Lots of subliminal imagery popping up.
(Catherine) Yeah, which is a little, tiny bit cheap.
The things which I have seen, I now can see no more.
(bell rings)
(Catherine) I really wanted to like this,
I was very excited to see it and so as with any experience like that, I suppose it's always
a bit of an anti-climax. And it was very-climactic for me, I fear to say. I can sort of see what
Peter means but it just didn't do it for me in those ways. The hothouse thing didn't quite
come through, and the playing of it felt very kind of, not panto, but Greta Scacchi and
Maxie and Pete. Broad brush strokes those! (Peter) Greta Scacchi? I don't think Greta
Scacchi is as big as all that, I mean, I've known teachers who are much bigger than that,
to be honest with you. I've known teachers who are kind of grosser and nastier and more
obviously cantankerous and distempered than that.
(Xan) There are a lot of stories you've got to tell!
(Peter) (laughs) Yes, our own outbreak of hysterical fainting that we had! But what
I Ioved was the fact that the hysterical fainting itself wasn't simply a matter of displaced or
suppressed sexuality. Is it the fact that the fainting has put them in touch with a
kind of creativity? (Xan) Yeah, it's a release.
(Peter) It's a release, and it's creative it's something from which they would be disbarred
in normal cases, and there's something very subversive about it. Especially, I thought
it was a fantastic scene, it's big and it's arguably melodramatic when they all start
fainting in the school assembly. (Xan) Which is almost like a religious tableau
where they're all kind of going over- (Peter) A kind of agape when they're all supposed
to be hearing a safety talk on domestic science and safety in the home. I thought there was
a kind of black comic genius to it. I take Catherine's point, it's big and viewed from
certain angles it's too big and unsubtle, but for me it was bold and sharp and pointed.
I adored it.
Are you not going to fight for the truth?
What have you been reduced to? (off camera) Prefects get her out!
Inertia? You're all asleep! To be free you must be conscious!
KILL THE SYSTEM! IT'S KILLING YOU!
(piano music plays)