A flurry of movement on Jordan Scott’s directorial debut, “Cracks,” today which must mean it’s coming out in the U.K. soon (looks like the date is December 4, 2009).
The daughter of Ridley Scott (whom you may have heard of), “Cracks” is a British, all-girl boarding school drama set in 1934 that stars Eva Green as a bewitching teacher who has her elite boarding-school girls — played by Juno Temple (“Year One”) Imogen Poots (“28 Weeks Later”), Maria Valverde and Sinead Cusack — under a kind of spell or sway with her rebellious ways and encouraging tales of free thinking individualism.
We actually saw the film at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, but failed to write a full review… because it just escaped us, we guess, but we did mention it in brief. It’s a decent little debut and definitely evinces Scott’s eye for detail and craft and generally very-competent filmmaking, but it does fall apart in the end a bit and isn’t quite wholly engaging throughout. Without spoiling anything, the pupils are basically enamored by their teacher, but a new, and worldly Spanish student who joins their clique (Maria Valverde) begins to challenge her authority and sophisticated chronicles, and both their worlds begins to crumble. Green is excellent in it as is Juno Temple (who is really up-and-coming and probably the star turn of the picture), but the film just follows the book that it’s based on and the suspension of disbelief dies a little bit in the last act. That’s all we’ll say. Not a bad film by any means though.
Anywhoo, now we have new images, a U.K. poster and a trailer. The Times Online has the trailer, but it’s not embeddable yet. Though it’s been pinched and put on to YouTube in not-so-hot quality, but it’s something. Ahh, also the reason for all this movement, “Cracks,” has its U.K. premiere at The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival tomorrow.