An outbreak of copycat fainting that takes over the school, apparently sparked by Abbie, lacks any coherent explanation, dramatic or clinical, though a bigger puzzle is the reaction (or rather inaction) of the staff, including the glacially detached headmistress, Dolan.
("They think they're so misunderstood. If they'd any idea what it's like to be a middle-aged woman, they'd know what 'misunderstood' meant.")
It's all supposed to be mysterious and creepily evocative, but it's more mirth-inducing, particularly since most of the "fainting" is executed with an ineptitude that reminds you of the first day in a bad mime class. A preposterous ending, saturated in baptismal overtones, is the last straw.
Writer-director Morley, whose brilliant, confronting 2011 documentary Dreams of a Life, anatomised the death of a woman who lay undiscovered in her North London flat for two years, has cited Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock and Lindsay Anderson's If ... as influences, which is suggestive. Those films, 47 and 40 years old respectively, were groundbreaking for their times but would look dated now, I fancy.
This certainly does.
The main surprise is that the lustrous Scacchi, as a dragon teacher, manages to look unrecognisably grotesque. That's what I call acting.
Cast: Maisie Williams, Maxine Peake, Florence Pugh, Joe Cole, Greta Scacchi, Monica Dolan
Director: Carol Morley Running time: 102 mins
Rating: R16 (sex scenes)
Verdict: Derivative, arty and contrived
