Clear metaphor of discovering male/female sexuality

Wait, I'm slightly confused. Are you saying the girls were lesbians discovering sex with a male? Lesbians discovering sex with one another? Or merely virgins discovering their sexuality?

To back what you've said you can also look at the dresses. All girls are dressed in clean white gowns (innocence). When Irma returns she wears red (passion/lust).

Voting History: http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=26598711

That's actually an odd exchange that reads quite ambiguous to me.

I've pretty much always taken that as more a case of Head Mistress Mrs. Appleyard ("the teacher") attempting to flirt with Mlle. de Poitiers ("the girl", who's actually a teacher), who politely but firmly shuts down Mrs. Appleyard's advances.

I totally agree. Since years I tried to point out the metaphoric tone of the whole story. The wistful longing atmosphere of the film, the heat, the music, the romantic innocence of the adolescents, the colours white and red, the might of nature etc etc. Thankfully many threads already dealt with it.
Unfortunately many of the posters don't want a metaphoric solution of the enigma and prefer looking for asteroids...
The visions of the wonders of love, sexuality, might vanish, when the young girls get married. Once you know about sexuality the innocence vanishes never to come back again - like the girls vanish. Your theory has (adult) supporters all over the world! Greetings from Germany.

Oh dear...someone's had too much university in one go.

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I just want sausages and mash and a bit of cake. Not twigs fried in honey or a donkey in a coffin!

Agree with Melwyn, who posted a reply to this thread about an hour ago. I think that the film plays some interesting tricks with the idea that it's "about" sexual discovery and/or the loss of innocence. The first half of this film certainly invites such a reading, practically demands it, as does Irma's very dramatic red-cloaked reappearance at the school. But after the two boys return from their second trip to the rock (having found Irma), the tone of the film shifts rather dramatically.

The film's first hour it largely concerns the girls themselves and plays out in an a gauzy yet ominous haze. After that point, it concentrates more on the effect that the disappearance has on the community at large -- on the effect that the lack of a satisfactory answer has on the community. The film's cinematic language changes too, becoming less sensually indulgent and more narratively direct. The earlier storyline, the erotically charged, metaphorically suggestive story of the lost girls, itself seems to disappear.

And Melwyn makes a good point about the tendency of reviewers to overemphasize the sexual angle, shortchanging the film's other concerns: the relationship of man to nature (civilized repression to natural chaos), the quasi-magical intersections of fate and coincidence, and the class dynamics that proscribe the lives of the film's characters. Remember also that the film makes very clear that the two girls who return are "intact" when found. It's too easy to describe this simply as a film about the discovery of sexuality. It's about so many other things, too, and no reductive summary seems to adequately encapsulate it. The absence of a corset can certainly suggest sexual indiscretion or violation, but it can also suggest rejection of Victorian propriety in favor of something more ancient, more pagan.

I'm inclined to take the film as a companion piece to the director's The Last Wave, from 1977 -- another understated horror film about the conflict between civilized rationality and atavistic mystery / natural power. On that level, it's a story about a group of young girls who perhaps turn into birds and fly away. And the one sad girl, left behind, who tries to follow them.

You must have been so afraid, Cassie... Then you saw a cop.

OK, I've just finished it 15 mins ago. And what I got on my mind about all the metaphors are exactly as you said!

This is an astonishing coming of age film with an interesting mystery genre.

Great Literature!
Great Film!
Great Artwork!

And thanks for the interpretation.

I feel that many of the points brought up in this thread can be summarized in the sentence said by Mlle. de Poitiers which was repeated many times throughout the film, that Miranda is "Botticelli's angel", while she was pointing to Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus".

There are many interpretations to that painting, and I think this sentence was put there to make a comparison between Miranda and Venus (according to Plato: Venus had two aspects: she was an earthly goddess who aroused humans to physical love or she was a heavenly goddess who inspired intellectual love in them). Plus one is born from nature and the other just vanishes without a trace into it

Plus for some reason, everyone kept asking for Miranda, and never for the others (at least that was the name that popped out from the shouting). Even the people searching at the rock kept shouting her name, and the girls at school were asking for her when Irma came back in red. Like she is the girl that holds everything together...

Anyway, I don't really have a point of view, it just seemed that Poitiers' sentence that was quite exaggerated in the film's soundtrack, hasn't been mentioned in these discussions.

Cheers.

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