Cracks - 2009 film review

Cracks is a film set in a girls' boarding school in the 1930s. It's a psychological thriller which I'd never heard of before, but the fact that it starred Eva Green, Imogen Poots, Juno Temple, and Sinead Cusack - four high-calibre performers - suggested to me that it was well worth a watch. And so it was, despite various flaws. The director is Jordan Scott, director of Ridley Scott, and she does a good job. In visual terms, it's a very appealing film.

Green plays Miss G, a charismatic young teacher who is adored by a group of her pupils. She's unconventional, with an apparently exotic past, and she is particularly close to Di, played by Temple, whose performance I feel is the best in the film. The status quo is disturbed when an attractive but enigmatic young Spanish aristocrat (played by Maria Valverde) arrives at at the school. 

The other girls take a dislike to the newcomer, but Miss G is charmed by her. Inevitably, Di becomes jealous. Our impression that Miss G is not really the exciting charmer she seems to be is confirmed and before long, relationships within the group become febrile. 

The main problem is that the pace is too slow, and that the script isn't as tight as it might have been. One has only to think of that brilliantly sinister school film Unman, Wittering and Zigo to realise that the potential of the situation isn't as fully realised as it might have been. The ironic finale isn't bad, but I felt slightly frustrated that a movie that might have been really gripping didn't work as well as I'd hoped. One of Miss G's girls is called Fuzzy and the storyline of Cracks itself is also rather fuzzy.

Adam Adamant again

I’ve invested in the complete collection of DVDs from the 1996-67 BBC TV series ‘Adam Adamant Lives!’ It’s a series I’ve mentioned before. Like ‘The Avengers’, ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘The Prisoner’, it’s utterly redolent of Sixties culture – right down to the melodramatic Kathy Kirby theme song - and it still bears watching today.

For those who don’t know it, the premise anticipates the Austin Powers movies. Adam is a swashbuckling Victorian adventurer, cryogenically frozen by his enemy, the mysterious and devilish ‘The Face’, and restored to life in Swinging London. He rapidly acquires a gorgeous companion, and even a butler, who assist – and sometimes obstruct – him in his battles on behalf of Good against Evil. The series featured many good actors, and one legendary director – the great Ridley Scott, long before Blade Runner.

The special features include a truly excellent documentary, which reunites Adam (the suave, if occasionally wooden, Gerald Harper) with his dolly bird chum Georgina (Juliet Harmer.) A fascinating fact is that the story-line was originally conceived as the revival in the Sixties of Sexton Blake. But the BBC couldn’t acquire the rights to Blake as a character, and he later turned up in an independent television series, played straight by Laurence Payne (himself an occasional crime novelist.)

There’s a marvellous account of the various names that were considered for the character after it was decided he had to be original, and not Blake. No question about my favourite – Darius Crud. Can you believe it? I swear it is true – I have the DVD to prove it! To my mind, it’s a great sadness that ‘Darius Crud Lives!’ was never brought to our screens. It would have acquired classic status.

When I first watched the show, at the tender age of eleven, I thought that Juliet Harmer was probably the prettiest tv star I’d ever seen, and all these years later, I’m not entirely sure I want to revise that judgement. Yet soon she more or less abandoned acting. Her role as Adam’s enthusiastic companion is still her great claim to fame. But a claim to be proud of, I think. The show was flawed, perhaps because the scripts were rushed out and therefore uneven, but it possessed elements of brilliance.