Jacqueline Audry's 69-year-old film, OLIVIA, gets a restored, welcome theatrical re-release

Yes, it's set in an all-girls school in the late 1800s and, yes, it's replete with lesbian undertones, overtones, and other tones, but if you're at all imagining that the newly restored and about-to-be re-released to theaters French film, OLIVIA, is at all similar to Germany's entry into the lesbian-girls-school sweepstakes, Mädchen in Uniform, guess again. These two movies are as different as, well, France and Germany.

As directed by the not-at-all-well-known on these shores filmmaker, Jacqueline Audry, shown below, with a screenplay by the director's sister, Colette Audry, and Pierre Laroche (from the novel by Dorothy Bussy), the movie manages to be both subtle and over-the-top.

As you might expect, this is a bizarre combination, but it's is also what keeps the film somehow on track. The subtlety can be found in both the performances and in the refusal to turn the feelings of love -- from adults/teachers toward students and vice versa -- into anything evil or wrong.

Granted the movie must adhere to the mores of the times -- both the decade of the film's setting, as well as the time the movie was actually made (those uptight 1950s) -- but it is still impressive how alternately buoyant and sad Olivia is.

In fact, the film sneaks up on you, as you discover that you care about almost all these characters a good deal more than you might have imagined as you began watching this rather outré tale and its decidedly "hothouse" environment.

The movie begins as a horse-drawn carriage wends its way toward the girl's school, its passengers the new student, Olivia (Marie-Claire Olivia, above), and the school's talkative and amusing cook (the wonderful Yvonne de Bray, below).

Once at the school, we (and Olivia) quickly meet the movie's protagonist and antagonist -- or maybe they're both, in their way, protagonists. The filmmaker sisters don't draw their lines of demarcation all that definitively, so that we can understand and even somewhat sympathize with both characters.

One woman, the more-or-less headmistress, embodied with regal hauteur and enormous, barely buried warmth by the beauteous Edwige Feuillère (below), has bought this academy/finishing school in which she now teaches for the other woman, an

also beautiful but vain and self-centered nitwit, played by Simone Simon (below, right, and star of Jacques Tourneur's 1942 genre classic, Cat People), who seems clearly to have been/maybe still is the head mistress' lover. For their part, the students seem to almost immediately fall in love with one or the other of these two women. The character played by Ms Simon encourages -- nay, demands -- this, while the one essayed by Ms Feuillère clearly has too much class for that, though she certainly does not discourage the girls' attraction.

The young students are brought to life quite well by the actresses involved, and though Olivia may be be the title character here, she is certainly not the most interesting. As attractive and starry as are the two leading actresses, that most important character would have to be the school's cook, Victoire, played so well by Ms de Bray.

Victoire is the moral center of the movie and also provides much of its charm and intelligence. We hang on nearly every word she utters because this woman is so smart, down-to-earth, and appealing. The students (their teachers, too) may live for love and all its discontents, but it is Victoire who knows what's what.

As a filmmaker, Ms Audry turns this little hothouse school into quite the entrancing place, with a camera that immediately pulls us in and turns everything, even the amazing frou-frou throughout, into something elegant, detailed and just short of wonderland. (The school's Christmas pageant is probably the film's highlight in terms of set, costumes, music, migraines, dance, romance -- the works!)

In all, Olivia proves a rather remarkable discovery (or rediscovery) of a film about a love that may be forbidden but is here so constant and, well, commonplace that it indeed makes the world -- and certainly this movie -- go 'round. Re-released by Icarus Films and Distrib Films US, in French with English subtitles and running 96 minutes, the movie opens this Friday, August 16, in New York City at the Quad Cinema and in Los Angeles on August 30 at Laemmle's Royal. If you inhabit neither coast, the film will undoubtedly be released to DVD and VOD in the weeks or months to come.

Girls' School Follies: Jordan Scott's CRACKS gets a limited theatrical release from IFC

A coming-of-age (but not coming-out) movie that takes us back to a British all-girls school during the 1930s -- com-plete with requisite lesbianism, nude scenes, and a nice look at young ladies, fashions and automo-biles -- CRACKS, the first full-length film from Jordan Scott (daughter of Ridley) is a ripe piece of cinema that is, fortunately, still a short distance from going bad. You can bite into its succulent fruit and enjoy the sweet taste, while realizing that, by tomorrow, it will have passed optimum status.  But that's tomorrow. Why carp when we still have today?

Boasting a very good (if somewhat underused) cast and filmed on a terrific old country estate, the story -- adapted from Sheila Kohler's novel by Ben Court, Carolyn Ip and Ms Scott -- has been moved from its original setting in South Africa to the British countryside with little loss of veracity or interest that I could imagine. From the first scene, we're tossed into the life and character of two of the film's three protagon-ists, the seemingly sophisticated and definitely alluring teacher Miss G (an often very good Eva Green) and her favorite student, to whom she's intent on offering life with a capital L. Juno Temple (below) plays the student, and this is her third excellent job in practically as many weeks: Kaboom, Glorious 39 (just out on video) and now Cracks. While I have not seen Ms Temple on stage, film-wise she might have a career ahead of her, the likes of which Dame Judi Dench is now completing.

The third major protagonist (all the girls are, but unfortunately the remainder of them we learn too little about) is a young lady of Spain -- minor royalty, no less -- named Fiamma (played by the very good María Valverde, below, right, of King of the Hill, who's shown here being served by Ms Green). Fiamma has come to the school due to some scandal or other involving her parents. She's not happy to be there, nor are the girls initially happy to have her.

One of the film's strength's is that the emotional terrain keeps changing: The girls, as well as Miss G, are buffeted about by their own needs and desires, and as these slowly grow out of control, they begin buffeting each other.

This is particularly true of our Miss G, who begins the tale as the strong sun (above) around which her student satellites circle (below). By the film's finale, orbits and planets have moved rather drastically.

Jordan Scott has a good eye for visuals and for keeping the precarious balance changing. And while people do some pretty awful things before the curtain comes down, there really are no villains -- not even Ms G, who comes closest, but by the end, retains a vestige of drained humanity.

Though you might blame the strictures of British society of the day for tamping down feelings and freedom, the filmmaker fortunately does not hammer this home. The love that dare not speak its name doesn't, but the damage is done nonetheless. And the least guilty party is sacrificed on the altar that rewards conventionality while allowing no outlet for one's deeper needs.

The film is certainly not all gloom and doom. Before the balance tips into tragedy, there are some interesting scenes of the gymnastic (above) and diving classes (below) offered by Miss G -- including a nice midnight, topless swim. And this popular teacher is prone to give her students advice such as, "The most important thing in life is... desire!"

In the practically all-female cast, Sinéad Cusak plays the semi-stern headmistress, while Imogen Poots (Solitary Man, Centurion), as another of the students, has little to do, probably because the film's 104-minute running time did not allow her character to blossom. The other young ladies do fine by their limited roles.

But it is Ms Green (below) and her role that command the movie, and this is both a blessing -- for the actress is a stunning-looking woman who carries herself with both strength and vulnerability, depending on the occasion -- and finally a curse because neither the screenplay, direction nor the actress are quite up to snuff with what is needed here. We get the point, and we feel badly for all concerned, but we are not finally moved to terror, tears or empathy in the way that real tragedy manages. This finally makes the movie an enjoyable, titillating entertainment that ought to have struck deeper and offered more.

Cracks, from IFC Films, opens this Friday, March 18, at IFC Center in New York, and will make its IFC-On-Demand
debut the following Wednesday, March 23.
Click here to check its availability in your area.