Peek into Natalie Dormer’s new female-led series Picnic at Hanging Rock
Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer stars in the puzzling adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock. It comes at the perfect time — just as Frances McDormand declares at the Oscars that females have stories to tell.
Natalie Dormer will star in the upcoming six-part miniseries Picnic at Hanging Rock, put out by Australian media company Foxtel. It reimagines the paranoia and mystery of the 1964 novel by Joan Lindsay. The ethereal and haunting 1975 film version directed by Peter Weir is revered as an iconic piece of Australian cinema.
Director of the new series, Larysa Kondraki, says audiences should expect a different interpretation. Early reviews are hailing the series as the new Handmaid’s Tale for 2018.
Natalie Dormer plays the enigmatic Mrs. Hester Appleyard of Appleyard College, a school for young ladies near Hanging Rock in rural Victoria, Australia. The series revolves around the mysterious disappearance of three schoolgirls and their headmistress on Valentine’s Day 1900.
The first two episodes screened at the Berlin Film Festival in February. It received standing ovations and high praise from critics. Insights into the series foretell a gripping and eerie supernatural drama, with time, clocks and circadian rhythms not to be trusted. Everyone is a suspect “with every gesture and word dripping with potential,” according to the Foxtel website. Dormer’s Appleyard is a supposedly a well-to-do English woman, yet her facade is slipping.
While European Gothic storytelling often entraps characters in dark haunted houses, Australian Gothic conventions rely on the rural isolation of characters in untamed landscapes. We expect the series to be an alluring cinematic experience, with narrative layerings and contradictions.
The vastness of the summer bush landscape will be countered by the claustrophobia of the volcanic rock formations of the very real location of Hanging Rock. The physical journey of the Valentine’s Day picnic will be played out against the emotional journey of self-discovery for the characters.
The societal, educational and sexual restrictions imposed on women in the Victorian setting will be infused with ideals of feminist liberation. Dormer expressed in an interview that she’s proud to be part of this production that embraces the zeitgeist of the #MeToo movement.
The series is based on a novel by a female author and scripted by female writers. It features a primarily female ensemble, has a female director and several female executive producers.
The biggest mystery of the series will be the ending. The novel and 1975 movie had ambiguous conclusions. A final chapter to the novel, supposedly written by Lindsay, was published 20 years after the novel’s publication; it veered too far into fantasy to be satisfying. The allure of the Picnic at Hanging Rock fable is that it is unresolved. Yet the mystery is heightened by speculation that the fictional story may actually be based on real-life events.
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Picnic at Hanging Rock will debut on Foxtel in Australia on May 6, and Amazon Prime will release the series in the U.S. some time this year.