In Peter Weir's film, "Picnic at Hanging Rock", a party of upper class schoolgirls and their teacher go missing. Among the vanished is Miranda, an artistic, angelic, sapphic and telepathic young woman. The film offers no explanations but concentrates on the psychological effect of Miranda's departure on her erstwhile companions. But this is not a strictly realistic film either: with a stylised, dream-like aesthetic, one imagines it as the sort of film Miranda herself would have enjoyed. In form it resembles Antonioni's L'Avventurra, though less subtle and (thankfully) also less boring. But when everything about the missing girls (not just their disappearance) is left beautiful and mysterious, a hole inevitably opens up in the middle of the film. A little more humanity, and a little less divinity, in their portrayal might have made it possible to care about their loss.
Review of Picnic at Hanging Rock
