"No historian, no matter how casually she caught up her trailing white skirts with a kid-gloved hand, no matter how erect she held her head on her aristocratic neck, could hope to capture the quality of stillness, of clear-eyed innocence of the girl on the bridge. She was like a delicate blossom, capable of growing only in a single time, adapted only to the select hothouse environment of the late Victorian era: the untouched flower, the blooming English rose, the angel in the house."
"Surly schoolgirl Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) (...) is zapped by beautiful English Juliet, the new girl at school. As played by the 17-year-old English actress Kate Winslet, Juliet is a shockingly original creation. Humiliating her teachers in a series of very funny scenes, she makes you constantly aware that Juliet is not "cheeking" them or even being rebellious, she is simply a loose canon, recognising no limits. A classically beautiful English rose slowly choking on the thorns of her craziness, Juliet-Kate recalls the young Vivien Leigh - that manic dazzle where madness and glamour meet."
— Julie Burchill's review of Heavenly Creatures for the Sunday Times
