[Editorial] Folie à Deux: When Teenage Bonding Goes Too Far

The bonds that women form as teenagers are necessary for dealing with a hostile world and the many changes of adolescence. However, sometimes that bond becomes overpowering and turns into a mutually obsessive relationship. The films Fun and Heavenly Creatures both feature teen girls whose friendships grow into a kind of folie à deux, or madness of two. Their fantasy worlds become their realities, and in both movies, their shared insanity leads to murder.*

The Rafal Zielinski-directed Canadian film Fun (1994) was based on a play written by James Bosley, and that play was based on the 1983 murder of an 85-year-old woman in California. The film flips back in forth in time between the events of the day the murder occurred and the crime's aftermath. 

When viewers first meet Bonnie (Alicia Witt) and Hillary (Renée Humphrey), they're lounging on Hillary's bed, talking about stolen makeup and giggling. Bonnie reads through Hillary's journal, commenting, "Some of it is true, some of it is made up, right? I don't really know which is which." Slowly it becomes apparent that these cheerful teens had committed murder earlier that same day. As they're changing for bed, Bonnie tries to change discreetly, and Hillary teases, "After today, you're going to be shy with me?" as if murdering a stranger was a bonding activity – and in their case, it was.

In flashbacks, the movies show how the two girls spent their day together. They meet by chance at a bus stop, and as Hillary later describes it, "It was like a door opening. First I was alone, and then Bonnie came in, and I knew we'd always be together, and no one could get into us." Hillary and Bonnie walk around their town in the way of aimless teenagers, hanging out at a record store and playing around at the arcade. They open up about the horrifying sexual assaults they faced while growing up; the extent of their trauma is clear in Hillary's disturbing revelation, "My father never hurt me; he just raped me."

After they decide to murder an old woman for "fun," Bonnie and Hillary are caught together cuddled in bed, and they're promptly locked up. The film shows their devotion to each other while in prison: Hillary says about Bonnie, "We would never betray one another… If she lied to me, it is only because she wanted to be my friend…Nothing she could do could ever make me mad at her." She chillingly adds, "If she wanted to kill me, I might even let her." But Hillary doesn't get the chance to prove her obsessive love for Bonnie. Hillary is transferred to another facility, and an abandoned Bonnie jumps off a roof, leading to a coma and her eventual death. When Hillary learns of Bonnie's death, she tells a journalist, "No comment," even as she is crying. The last scene of Fun shows Hillary isolated and standing alone in the prison yard. 

Peter Jackson's 1994 film Heavenly Creatures (both set and filmed in New Zealand) is based on the 1954 murder of a woman by her daughter and her daughter's best friend in Christchurch. Young Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) is often looking a bit disheveled and glaring at those around her. Juliet (Kate Winslet) arrives in Pauline's French class, and she's elegant and confident, even correcting the teacher about an error she's made. 

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After hitting it off during art class and bonding over the fact that they both dealt with severe health issues, the two girls begin a very active friendship. They're always in motion, whether they're swooning over Mario Lanza records, playing dress-up, fantasizing about saints or making figures out of clay. Gradually, Pauline and Juliet built a secret world together that's more comfortable and welcoming than their current realities. 

The Fourth World is a beautiful place – or more accurately, a shared hallucination full of unicorns, vibrant gardens, chirping birds and gigantic butterflies (with Mario Lanza music in the background). Pauline writes in her diary about this shared heaven, saying, "We have an extra part of our brain that can appreciate The Fourth World." The duo are in a world that is all their own. And as Pauline promises, "Through everything, we sink or swim together."

Whenever they're apart, they write each other melodramatic letters where Juliet is known as Deborah and Pauline is known as Charles. They go deeper and deeper into their shared delusions with their imagined personas; they even exchange updates on their imaginary son, whom they proudly note has killed dozens of people. 

Both sets of parents become uncomfortable with the girls' closeness. As Juliet's father tells Pauline's parents, "It's the intensity of the friendship that concerns me." Both Pauline and Juliet believe on some level that they're  daughters of Juliet's wealthy parents, and they refuse to believe they'd ever be separated. When they find out Juliet's parents are sending her to South Africa as a way to treat her illness-prone body, the teens decide to murder Pauline's mom, whom they see as an obstacle to their staying together. They bludgeon her to death, and like Bonnie and Hillary, they're almost immediately caught. 

Pauline is asked if she and Juliet are romantically involved, and Hillary is asked the same about her relationship with Bonnie. The girls scoff at the questions, believing their connections to be more than that. Bonnie and Hillary are very physically affectionate, and Juliet and Pauline are even more so – the Heavenly Creatures pair are so close that they share a bathtub, not to mention a kiss. This kiss can be read as just another part of their shared delusions. Pauline later explains in her diary that they were exploring how their beloved saints would make love. 

In both Fun and Heavenly Creatures, the girls truly believe they cannot live without one another. Hillary and Bonnie meet the day of the murder, but as Hillary points out during an interview with a journalist, "We only knew each for one day, and we did more that day than most people do in their lifetime." Her statement is undeniable, but while she and Bonnie see their act of "fun" as something positive, anyone outside their shared delusions are horrified by their cruelty. However, it is true that no one else could possibly understand what happened that day more than they do. 

Juliet and Pauline's bond has had more time to develop, but it still shares the same ending: the murder of an older woman, folllowed by prison and separation. Both pairs shared a horrific experience, at that moment in time, they believed to be a reasonable course of action. All four teens are so deep into their delusional world that they justified murder of other women. In Fun, Hillary and Bonnie are desperate to escape their abusive homes; in Heavenly Creatures, Juliet and Pauline are desperate to remain together at all costs. The girls are blinded to the reality of their situations and unable to comprehend that in the world outside their folie à deux, their actions will have extremely dire consequences. 

Interestingly, both films incorporate color versus black and white. In Fun, the scenes of Hillary and Bonnie getting to know each other – or as Bonnie says, "It was like we were getting high together on each other's company" – are in bright, vivid color. Likewise, Pauline and Juliet's scenes in The Fourth World are saturated with color. After the murders, scenes of the girls separating are in stark black and white in both movies. 

Despite the life-altering bonds they shared, they're ultimately separated for good. Bonnie's death puts an end to her friendship with Hillary, and a somber card at the end of Heavenly Creatures notes that Juliet and Pauline were never able to see one another again. These four teenage girls only wanted to spend their time together, reveling in the world created by their shared madness. Sadly, it is this shared madness that ultimately causes their final separation.

* These films are both based on true stories, however, this article refers only to the film interpretations. 

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