Carsets & Caresses
THE BBC’S NEWEST PERIOD DRAMA, PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK, SMOULDERS WITH SAPPHIC SENSUALITY
WORDS ROXY BOURDILLON
PHOTOS BBC/FREMANTLE MEDIA/NARELLE PORTANIER
There’s an ongoing stereotype that all-girls schools are breeding grounds for covert snogging sessions, that when students aren’t swotting up, they’re stroking each other’s knees under the maths desk and grazing up against one another in the stationery cupboard. Well, in my case, that cliché turned out to be 100% accurate; and in dreamy new period drama, Picnic At Hanging Rock, there are sapphic schoolgirls, on the cusp of womanhood, and each other, in abundance.
The latest adaptation of Joan Lindsay’s classic 1967 novel oozes homoeroticism. The haunting tale of three Victorian teenagers who go for a Valentine’s Day picnic in rural Australia, from which some of them are destined never to return, has been radically reimagined for a modern audience. Showrunner Larysa Kondracki’s interpretation retains the ethereal aura of Peter Weir’s much-loved 1975 film, but injects the story with even more grit and sexual tension. Lily Sullivan, who plays headstrong Miranda, describes the series to Collider as “dark, twisted, magic”, “with all of these weird, powerful, young women” and a “1900s rock and roll edge”.