and thumbs. Then she crossed her arms over her chest and flicked the thin straps of her slip from her shoulders and down her bare arms.
Little by little she lowered the slip until, with a faint wobble, her breasts wrestled themselves free of the material and she pushed the garment to her waist. Swaying more urgently now, she eased her hands down her stomach before pushing the shiny slip to the floor, standing naked before the mirror. Finally she turned towards her bedroom window and stared intently at the red dot.
PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK — A FILM BY PETER WEIR
In the 1975 film Picnic at Hanging Rock, set in Australia in 1900, a party of girls from a local college set out for a day at Hanging Rock, a local beauty spot. The film begins in Appleyard College and introduces us to the girls as they dress, wash their hair and press flowers. They are all very ladylike and it is clear that the college is private and parents have to pay to send their daughters there.
Early on we meet the beautiful Miranda, who is compared to a Botticelli Angel by the French teacher from a book she’s reading. Botticelli was a painter in the fifteenth century. We are also introduced to Marion and Irma who are also pretty, but it is Miranda who steals the film with her looks and also her sadness. She seems to know that she’s not going to live very long because she tells her friend Sara, who idolises Miranda, that she must choose someone else to love because she herself is doomed.
Sara is appalled at this. She is an orphan who is picked on by the headmistress, Mrs Appleyard, because her foster-parent has not sent the money to pay for her lessons and so she is not allowed to go on the upcoming picnic. Irma compares Sara to a deer she found that died, fragile and pale and also doomed to die.
So things are all set up towards some kind of tragedy at Hanging Rock and every time we see a shot of the rock the music becomes creepy, as though some supernatural force is living there. Also, the girls spend a lot of time looking at the sky as though they are thinking about the afterlife and being angels.
At the picnic, the coach driver tells us his watch has stopped: another bad omen that the Hanging Rock is somehow not natural. Miranda asks a teacher if she, Irma and Marion can go and explore the rock. Another girl, Edith, nags them to come along too. She is not pretty but overweight and she always complains, in comparison to the calm beauty of the other three. As they disappear from view, Miranda turns with her long blond hair and waves at the teacher, almost as if she’s saying goodbye.
On Hanging Rock the film becomes less natural. There is a lot of slow motion with weird sound effects and odd camera angles which imply that some unseen force is watching them. Also the girls seem very calm and resigned to their fate. At one point, Marion says, ‘Surprising how many humans are without purpose,’ which I take to mean that she sees no point in living. Also Miranda says, ‘Everything begins and ends at exactly the right time and place,’ as though she knows her time is up and she accepts it.
While Edith is whingeing again the three friends hold hands and set off further up the Rock. This is in slow motion and there is an unnatural rumbling as they leave. Edith seems to know something is wrong and begins screaming and runs off.
I found this film very moving. It was quite slow but I couldn’t take my eyes off it. What I found most moving was the calmness with which the girls faced their death. They are the only ones in the film who don’t seem to be suffering. They’re leaving the world behind. Their pain is over and it is left to everyone remaining to suffer the torment of their disappearance and to wish they’d behaved differently towards them.
Back in the real world, Mrs Appleyard’s school starts to go bust and she ends up drinking too much and then killing herself at Hanging Rock. Sara throws herself off the roof of the school because she misses Miranda so much and she can’t bear the pain. The director is telling us that perfect love can’t exist for very long and we have to settle for imperfect love or die.
Interestingly, one of the girls, Irma, is found but she can’t remember anything and her life becomes really miserable again once she returns to normal life. The director might be suggesting she may have been better off dead because now she has to grow old and ugly and live with all her pain. He’s also trying to tell us that a lot of the story may not be real and not to believe what happened because the first words spoken by Miranda are from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe which I found on the internet. ‘What we see and what we seem is but a dream, a dream within a dream.’ This tells us that reality and fantasy are being mixed up, like life may be a (bad) dream but there are different places where you can be happy, including when you go to the afterlife.
824 words
By Kyle Kennedy
Kyle checked through the text and saved it on to his pen drive. He lay back on his bed and flicked at a remote. He was bare-chested, his skinny frame glistening in the evening heat. Music drifted out of the speakers mounted at each corner of the room — The Smiths. He looked down at the pasty, almost white flesh on his puny torso and pulled on a T-shirt in disgust then gazed at the cloudless sky, the same sky the girls at Hanging Rock must have been looking at. He could hear the faint muffle of outdoor life continuing elsewhere even though his window was firmly closed against it.
His favourite song started to play — ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ — and he began to sing along. He nodded wistfully when Morrissey sang about the possibility of being run over by a ten-ton truck and that to die beside his lover in such a way would be a privilege. Kyle dug into his skintight jeans and pulled out a crumpled and dirty piece of paper. Unfolding it, he read the handwritten text.
Jake finished his hundredth sit-up and fell back on to the floor panting. He sat up and rolled over to do his press-ups when he noticed his mobile flashing. It was Kyle. Jake sat on his bed and looked at the sweat dotting his brow in the wardrobe mirror.
‘Hello.’
‘It’s Kyle.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Jake. I’m outside.’
With phone in hand, Jake looked out into the dark sultry night. Kyle was at the front gate waving at him. ‘It’s late, Kyle.’
‘I’ve got something for you. To thank you for this morning.’
‘This morning?’ asked Jake, though he knew very well what Kyle meant.
‘When Wilson went for me at college. You stopped him hitting me.’
Jake smiled. ‘Oh, that.’
‘Can you come down? I’d knock on the door but I don’t think your dad likes me much.’
‘Wait there.’ A minute later, Jake had slipped through the kitchen and out of the back door. He came round the corner of the house and walked towards Kyle, who pulled his hood down and watched Jake’s panther-like steps.
Kyle grinned sheepishly. ‘Hi, Jake.’
‘Kyle.’ Jake nodded back. There was a brief silence. ‘Well?’
‘Well, it’s my eighteenth tomorrow.’
‘Happy Birthday.’
‘Thanks.’ Kyle hesitated.
‘Hope you’re getting a new hoodie.’
‘Sorry?’
Jake smiled to diminish any insult. ‘That G-Star thing you’re wearing. You ever take it off?’
‘It depends,’ said Kyle mysteriously.
Jake stiffened. ‘Was there something else?’
‘My mum’s going away for the weekend with Daddy Warbucks — Uncle Len. He’s kind of her boyfriend.’
‘I know him,’ said Jake. ‘That old fart who dresses like Eminem.’
Kyle giggled and Jake reluctantly laughed with him. ‘I know. A pensioner in a tracksuit. That’s so not right on
