Get Your Reps In: Celebrate Valentine’s Day by Watching “Picnic at Hanging Rock”

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Despite its Feb. 14 billing at the Hollywood Theatre, Picnic at Hanging Rock is more romantic in the sense of English lit than Valentine’s Day.

The transcendent opening act of this pivotal title in the Australian New Wave often resembles the lightly supernatural sway of a great Gothic novel, as four picnickers go missing on a field trip in Victoria, Australia, circa 1900. The titular rock site of the schoolgirls’ picnic represents the natural world at its most symbolically active—equal parts alluring, liberating and devouring.

Director Peter Weir (who’d later become a Hollywood mainstay with Dead Poet’s Society and The Truman Show) creates soft-focus hypnosis, especially around the disappearance of Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert)—whose ethereal beauty the film employs totemically, much like that of Twin Peaks’ Laura Palmer.

With Hanging Rock always looming in the distance, we see how Miranda and her classmates’ rebellious choice to hike the ominous mound shakes everyone in the vicinity, from classmates to teachers to bystanders.

To be clear, Picnic at Hanging Rock is showing on Valentine’s Day due to the date on which the girls went missing: Feb. 14, 1900. So skip the gaudy chocolates and make this gorgeous, disquieting trip an annual tradition.

ALSO PLAYING:

5th Avenue: Eve’s Bayou (1997), Feb. 10-12. Academy: Ghost (1990), Feb. 10-16, Wild at Heart (1990), Feb. 10-16. Cinema 21: Roman Holiday (1953), Feb. 11. Cinemagic: Moonage Daydream (2022), Feb. 12. Clinton: Set It Off (1996), Feb. 9. Purple Rain (1984), Feb. 10. Love & Basketball (2000), Feb. 13. Gundermann (2018), Feb. 14. Hollywood: It Happened One Night (1934), Feb. 9. Westworld (1973), Feb. 10. Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), Feb. 11. Ghost in the Shell (1995), Feb. 12. How High (2001), Feb. 13.