fter re-watching Cracks last night, I felt oddly compelled to give my thoughts on this film adaptation of Sheila Kohler’s book of the same name. I then re-considered, maybe I should just review the book — after all, I did just read it last year, so I do remember quite a bit. But then I just decided that the phrase Cracks vs. Cracks sounded better — like Spy vs. Spy, and so I decided to just do a combined book / film review a la Gillian because I am at a point where I cannot actually separate my thoughts on the book from my thoughts on the film.

The film stars Eva Green, Juno Temple, Maria Valverde, and Imogen Poots, and is set for a limited release in the US this March, which means later this year I will be able to buy a Region 1 Blu-Ray, which will make me very happy. As you can probably guess from that statement, I like the film a great deal. I also happened to hear about the film first, before realizing it was based on a novel. Had I originally known about the book, I probably would have made an effort to read it first. And had I read the book first, there’s a very good chance I probably wouldn’t have bothered seeing the film. As you can guess from that statement, I didn’t like the book all that much. I thought it was OK, somewhat unmemorable. Rarely do I prefer a film over its book, but alas, this is one of those cases.

What I should say now before I go any further is that the film is very different from the book, not as different as say Girl, Interrupted is from the book (unfilmable book is unfilmable), but the two have only superficial commonalities. Diving plays a key role in both, there’s an all-girls school, a foreigner who comes in, and that outsider’s fate is ultimately the same though the cause is different.

What’s different then? Well for starters, the film is set in 1930s England. The book is set in present day, 40 years after the girls have left the school, with (extensive) flashbacks of the girls time at the school. The boarding school is in South Africa, and I no longer remember when it is actually set, but I don’t think it’s the 1930s at all but the 1950s. In the film the foreign girl is from Spain; in the book, she’s from Italy. What is the purpose of this small change exactly? I’m not sure. Like the recently read, The Fates Will Find Their Way, this book is told in the first person plural, and Sheila Kohler is one of the characters in the novel. Unsurprisingly she does not feature in the film. Di, the captain of the diving team in both, is far more important in the film than she is in the book. She might as well not even be captain in the book since her presence is no more felt than any of the other girls’ and her personality barely explored. In both, the students have a crush on Miss G, the oh-so-seemingly-cool diving instructor. This is in fact where the term “cracks” comes from — they’re cracked out on Miss G essentially. How serious their crush is, I suppose varies from girl to girl though it is hard to tell in a novel that insists on using the collective we. In the film, Miss G and Di are especially close; in the novel, this does not seem to be as much the case.

The brevity of the novel (160 pages or so), made for a quick but ultimately unsatisfying read, particularly when you consider how many characters there are and how little time is devoted to each. It seemed incomplete and even after we learn of the secret the girls, now women, have been harboring all these years, it’s difficult to really care because even that’s not handled with much depth.

Now, for the major spoilers (of both the novel and the film), which can be found below the jump.

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