Toronto International Film Festival 2009
 

 Synopsis
 Set in an austere and cloistered English girls’ school, Cracks is a compelling tale of innocence corrupted. An elite group of girls idolise their beloved teacher, Miss G. But their unhealthy bond is threatened by the arrival of an exotic and beautiful foreign student whose rejection of Miss G’s attention threatens the status quo and brings tragic consequences for them all.
 
 Program Note
 What if relatively smart girls standing on the verge of womanhood are isolated from the world and spend their days in a remote boarding school surrounded by a forest and a lake where the mist rises every night in England in the 1930s? This would no doubt raise indecent sensual thoughts of something secretive and sweet, but this film goes further than that. It fulfills such fantasies to the maximum and then charges straight ahead to a scary yet fascinating plot. Miss G is a charismatic teacher who freely ‘stirs up’ the girls (and is even a diving instructor!) and the object of rather ‘improper’ admiration, very much like a goddess. The girls have gotten all their information about the outside world through Miss G, but this status quo is threatened when Fiamma, an exotic beauty from Spain, transfers to the school. Miss G has always told the girls that the most important thing in life is desire, but she now loses control when Fiamma does not fall for her at all. Meanwhile, the girls are at their wits’end, trying to choose between Miss G and Fiamma. Miss G, a charismatic goddess to the schoolgirls who falls apart because of the desire to maintain her legend and another kind of desire, is played by Eva Green who was in The Dreamers and Casino Royale. This film is the debut feature of director Jordan Scott, the daughter of the famous Ridley Scott. (Azuki LIM)