Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975) B

A completely devastating film about the mysterious vanishing of three schoolgirls and a teacher during a completely innocent St. Valentine's Day picnic in 1900 Australia. I loved Weir's style here and the strange and eerie atmosphere he sets up, from the almost Persona-like opening to the Michael's slight obsession with finding the girls after witnessing them go up the rock to the drunken decline of the headmistress (the fabulous Rachel Roberts) at the school the girls came from. My only problem with the film is that it occasionally slips into L'Avventura territory where it just seems to completely forget the fact that we're searching for these women and plays it off like it doesn't matter. Weir only lets this happen twice or so and then immediately draws us back in.