History Film / HeavenlyCreatures

Pauline Rieper is [[AloofDarkHairedGirl a bright, imaginative, but gloomy girl,]] traits that set her apart from both her salt-of-the-earth working-class parents and her run-of-the-mill schoolmates. Enter [[ManicPixieDreamGirl Juliet]] [[IllGirl Hulme]] (Winslet), a NewTransferStudent from England, born to [[TheBeautifulElite a wealthy, glamorous, intellectual family]]--everything that Pauline dreams of for herself.

* CommonalityConnection: Juliet and Pauline bond over their shared history of being [[IllGirl Ill Girls.]] They are also both huge fans of the ''Literature/{{Biggles}}'' adventure series.

* IllGirl: Both girls as children, but mainly Juliet.
** Juliet has had tuberculosis and was left 5 years on Bahamas (without her parents) for the warm climate [[ForYourOwnGood to improve her health]]. Her illness returns briefly in the course of the movie.
** Pauline had osteomyelitis and had to have many operations. She says she had spent ages in hospitals.

%% * {{Gayngst}}: To the utmost extreme.

** When asked by police if his daughter kept a diary, Herbert Reiper directed them to where the diary was kept, unlocked and in plain sight on Pauline's desk. He stated that neither he nor his wife would ever read their child's diary as they considered that an unforgivable breach of privacy--a very honorable sentiment, particularly for parents in conservative Christchurch in the 1950s. Had they been a little less noble and a little more nosy, Honorah's death might have been prevented.

%% * LargeHam: Kate Winslet as Juliet.

--> '''Honora''': You're nothing but a cheap little tart!
-->'''Pauline''': Well I must take after you, then! ''(Honora slaps her)'' You ran off with Dad when you were only seventeen! Nana Parker told me!

-->'Tis indeed a miracle one must feel\\
That two such heavenly creatures are real

--> ''They sent me off to the Bahamas for the good of my health. They sent me to the Bay of bloody Islands for the good of my health!!!''

--> My worst fear about all this is that you will find Pauline. - Anne Perry to Robert McCrum, interview in ''The Guardian'', 29 June 1996.

[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/heavenlycreatures_8108.jpg]][[caption-width-right:250:''Tis indeed a miracle, one must feel... That two such heavenly creatures are real.'']]

* RomanticTwoGirlFriendship: A central theme of the whole movie with Juliet and Pauline.

* CommonalityConnection: Juliet and Pauline bond over their shared history of being [[IllGirl Ill Girls.]] They are also both huge fans of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biggles Biggles]] adventure series.

* SchoolgirlLesbians: They appear to be this in the movie (a deep friendship becoming romantic, passionate love) but Anne Perry insists it was "only" a really intense two-girl friendship. (Pauline doesn't talk to the press.) The actresses were instructed to play the girls as "devoted friends" who were just role-playing love scenes between their favorite characters.

* MarySue: In-universe, Empress Deborah and Gina seem to fit all the standard characteristics, especially because both are idealized versions of Juliet and Pauline, respectively.
-->'''Pauline''': ''[explaining her fictional characters, showing him a clay statuette of Gina]'' Nicolas has got his eye on Gina, an amazingly beautiful gypsy.\\
'''John''': ''[teasing]'' Looks a bit like you, Yvonne.[[note]]Yvonne is Pauline's middle name and family nickname[[/note]]

* UnfortunateNames: Pauline ''[[TheGrimReaper Rieper]]'' especially after what she does to her mother.

** ''Pauline'' was described as glamorous by classmates: a "proud beauty" "like a gypsy" with "flashing eyes that would just strike you dead." Far from being ostracized or withdrawn, Pauline was a clever, well-liked {{Tomboy}}, while Juliet was considered by her classmates as a [[BritishStuffiness snooty Brit]] with a "perpetual cold" who they believed [[PlayingSick exaggerated her symptoms]] for attention.

* ScreamingBirth: Juliet enacts one as Empress Deborah giving birth to Prince Diello (a cushion). Pauline is on hand as Emperor Charles assisting the delivery.

Pauline Rieper is [[AloofDarkHairedGirl a bright, imaginative, but gloomy girl,]] traits that set her apart from both her salt-of-the-earth working-class family and her run-of-the-mill schoolmates. Enter [[ManicPixieDreamGirl Juliet]] [[IllGirl Hulme]] (Winslet), a NewTransferStudent from England, born to [[TheBeautifulElite a wealthy, glamorous, intellectual family]]--everything that Pauline dreams of for herself.

* {{Irony}}: The girls concoct the scheme because they are desperate not to be separated--only for them to be arrested immediately, sent to different prisons, and "it was a condition of their release that they never meet again".[[note]]This is a load of bunkum, originally concocted by Juliet / Anne Perry. According to Peter Graham's account of the Parker-Hulme murder, ''So Brilliantly Clever'', "It has often been said, not least by Juliet Hulme herself, that a condition of the girls’ release was that they were to have no further communication. This was not so. The ''Sydney Sun-Herald'' quoted [Secretary for Justice] Barnett as saying, "Miss Hulme’s release is unconditional. . . . Miss Parker’s release is subject to general control as to her residence, employment and the like". Asked if the girls had been given, or been asked to give, an understanding to keep apart or refrain from corresponding, the secretary for justice said they had not been released on such a condition."[[/note]]

* DatingWhatDaddyHates: A variation, but when Pauline's parents are SlutShaming her for sleeping with Jonathan (when she actually had only cuddled with him), she retaliates by sneaking over to his house and making it official, whilst imagining she's actually in Borovnia reuniting with Diello and the rest of the royal family, including Juliet.

Bonding over their childhood ailments, their feelings of superiority and loneliness, and their shared [[WorldBuilding imaginary fantasy kingdom]], Pauline and Juliet quickly become inseparable. Both the fantasies and the friendship sustain the girls during a tumultuous year in which Pauline's already [[ToughLove rocky relationship]] with her mother steadily declines, Juliet's [[IncurableCoughOfDeath health issues]] threaten her life, and [[YourCheatingHeart the Hulmes' marriage teeters on the brink of divorce.]] With their worlds falling apart around them, Pauline and Juliet seem to withdraw not only from their families, but from reality itself, falling into fantasies in which they escape to [[ImagineSpot The Fourth World]], a PersonalizedAfterlife of "music, art, and pure enjoyment" occupied by their hand-selected "saints" and accessible to only an elite few [[TitleDrop "heavenly creatures"]]--such as themselves.

* YourCheatingHeart: Hilda Hulme, a marriage counselor, begins an affair with Bill Perry, one of her clients, and actually ''moves him into their house'', devastating her husband, who's aware of the whole arrangement.

* {{Hypocrite}}: Mrs. Rieper chastises Pauline for having a boy in her bed even though she herself had run away with Mr. Rieper when she was only 17, and never married him.

* ParentalHypocrisy: When Mrs. Rieper chews out Pauline about sleeping with John and calls her a "cheap little tart", Pauline angrily retorts that she's no better, as Honorah ran away with Pauline's father (who abandoned the wife and children he already had) when she was only a little older than Pauline herself.

* DoggedNiceGuy: John takes this to creepy levels when he climbs into Pauline's bed, then they have sex later, and then follows her train on a bike, screaming about how much he loves her. ValuesDissonance as back then this would just be considered cute teenage/young adult behaviour.

* MadeOfPlasticine: The Borovnians. ''Literally''. The girls create their characters from clay in their reality, and they look like that in their fantasy world as well.

* AntiEscapismAesop: The movie involves two girls escaping from the harsh reality they live in by creating an imaginary kingdom - this trope comes into effect when one of the girls starts showing signs of insanity and becomes more and more obsessed with the imaginary world to the extent of everything else. Even her parents' lives. But the girls are also obsessed with being together in reality. This is a pretty significant divergence from the events the movie was based on, as such claims were part of InsanityDefense that was pretty quickly rejected.

* DoggedNiceGuy: John takes this to creepy levels when he climbs into Pauline's bed, then they have sex later, and then follows her train on a bike, screaming about how much he loves her.

** Juliet Hulme, AKA Deborah ("Debórah," her role-playing name), Guilletta (Italian for "Juliet" and Pauline's romantic name for Juliet in her diary), Antoinette in French class (though In Real Life, she briefly insisted on being called this by her family), and [[spoiler: Anne, as the alias she used after she was released from prison]].

** Juliet has had tuberculosis and was left 5 years on Bahamas (without her parents) for the warm climate to improve her health. Her illness returns briefly in the course of the movie.

-->'''Pauline''': ''[explaining her fictional characters]'' Nicolas has got his eye on Gina, an amazingly beautiful gypsy.\\

* ParentalNeglect: Juliet's parents left her alone in hospital for ''five years'' when she was first sick. Then in the film, when she's diagnosed with tuberculosis on her lungs, her parents simply leave her behind to go on a business trip (her father has a conference while her mother is accompanying him).

* ParentalHypocrisy: When Mrs. Rieper chews out Pauline about sleeping with John and calls her a "cheap little tart", Pauline angrily retorts that she's no better, as Honorah married Pauline's father when she was only a little older than Pauline herself.

Alarmed by the intensity of the friendship and the changes it has wrought on their daughters, the two sets of parents agree that it would be best to separate them, with Pauline's mother appearing to be the ringleader behind the plot. Juliet will be sent to live with relatives in South Africa, and Pauline, unable to obtain a passport without her parents' consent, will be left behind. But on the eve of Juliet's departure, [[{{Matricide}} Pauline comes up with the perfect plan to stay together.]]

* EnglishRose: Juliet is a pretty, intelligent girl from England, born to a rich, glamorous, intellectual family. She has striking eyes, blond hair, peachy-pale complexion, bee-stung lips and visually fits the archetype very well. She's attached to her parents, is seen playing with her little brother and has an intense friendship with Pauline. She's occasionally too spirited and sometimes downright rude to teachers, which might be excused because she's a teenager, but later events subverts this trope entirely: English Rose can't be a murderer.