Picnic at Hanging Rock

Picnic at Hanging Rock (Criterion #29). 1975 Janus Films.
Starring: Rachel Roberts, Vivean Gray, Helen Morse, Kirsty Child, Tony Llewellyn-Jones, Anne-Louise Lambert, Karen Robson, Jane Vallis, Ingrid Mason, Margaret Nelson, Christine Schuler
Director: Peter Weir
Available at Amazon.

A film adaptation of Joan Lindsay's 1967 novel, and one of the first Australian films to reach an international audience.

At an English girls' school somewhere in the outback, a Valentine's Day picnic is planned at Hanging Rock in Victoria. The school is headed by the strict and unyielding Mrs. Appleyard (Roberts), who oversees teachers like the remote math teacher Greta McCraw (Gray), the French teacher Mademoiselle de Portiers (Morse), and Miss Lumley (Child), who is eager to keep Mrs. Appleyard happy. We also learn about a student named Miranda (Lambert) and her circle of friends, which includes Sara (Nelson), who is disliked by Mrs. Appleyard, and is kept from going on the picnic because she hasn't memorized an assigned poem. Sara secretly has a deep crush on Miranda.

The class rides to Hanging Rock, with Mlle. de Portiers and Miss McCraw as superviors. Strangely, everyone's watches freeze at noon. Later, four of the girls, including Miranda, decide to climb on the rock in defiance of Mrs. Appleyard's instruction. They take a brief nap on a plateau, and wake up, seemingly under a spell. Miranda, Irma (Robson), and Marion (Vallis) march into a cave, witnessed by Edith (Schuler), who yells for them not to go in. Miss McCraw personally goes up to see what happened. The rest of the class arrives back at the school over two hours late, and a hysterical Edith is unable to explain what happened on the rock.

A search for the four women is started the next morning, but no one seems to be able to find any clues, until an unconscious Irma is found. She has no memory of what happened, and is soon withdrawn from the school by her parents. Michael Fitzhubert (Dominic Guard) was on the rock with his family on the same day as the schoolgirls were there, recruits Sara's brother Albert (Jarratt) to find Miranda, whose obsession he is growing more obsessed with. Both men begin having nightmares about a great evil lurking at Hanging Rock.

More students are withdrawn from school, and Mrs. Appleyard starts treating Sara even more cruelly than before. One morning, Sara's body is discovered in the school's greenhouse, having either been pushed, or jumped to her death. Mrs. Appleyard, whose personal and professional life had been going downhill since the disappearances, goes to the rock and jumps to her death a few days after Sara is found.

The book and the film never addressed what happened to the three women who disappeared, but in 1987, an epilogue to the story (that had been removed from the original novel before publication) was released, explaining that Marion, Miranda, and Miss McCraw encounter a "hole in space" which they voluntarily enter, leaving Irma behind.

Recommended movie. The Criterion Collection is planning to re-release this film at some point in 2009, but have not set a definite street date as of yet (confirmed here).