What a movie. Australia started come out with films that received worldwide attention in the early 1980s, with "The Last Wave", and a cascade of them has followed, from the raucous "Mad Max" to more contemplative issues. And on top of that, they've been putting out a horde of toothsome blonds, from Olivia Newton John to Nicole Kidman. GOOD ON YA, MATE! When it comes to magnificently featured blonds, Anne-Louise Lambert, as Miranda, will serve in "Picnic at Hanging Rock." It's true she's a bit tender, only in her mid-teens like the other girls at Mrs. Appleyard's (Rachel Roberts') expensive boarding school in rural Victoria. But the fact is that the film is full to the brim with budding but repressed sexuality -- repression of all kinds, in fact, with all that strict discipline and formality. Even one of the other students seems to have a crush on Miranda. So blame Joan Lindsay and Cliff Green, the writers, instead of my own admittedly warped interests.

All is not well at the Appleyard School. The continent at the time was nothing much more than an English outlier and the school has imported its parent culture wholesale -- the strict class system, everything. It's already old fashioned. And it's feeling the financial pinch too.

All Mrs. Appleyard needs is some kind of scandal, and that's what happens. The girls go on a picnic to nearby Hanging Rock, a jagged jumble of bushes and gray boulders with stucco textures sticking up out of nowhere. A handful of girls, including Miranda, decides to climb to the top. A plump whiny girl follows and when she tires she loses contact with the others. Panic -- in self-disciplined British style -- follows when the other four fail to return. A search is implemented. Bloodhounds, aboriginal trackers, but there is no trace of the girls.

After a day or two, one girl is finally retrieved in an unconscious state and brought back to the school. She's out of it because of exposure and shock, but she is at least "intact", as the doctor puts it, although there is some mystery about why her shoes and stockings are missing, and why she isn't wearing the corset that is part of the girls' uniforms. No trace of the others is ever found. The affair effectively brings about the end of Mrs. Appleyard and her boarding school.

Not much of a story, is it? A couple of girls go missing from a school and that's that. Not a drop of blood in sight. Not a single motorcycle roar within hearing. And yet the film seems pregnant with a sense of languorous dread, of something that is not quite right -- cockeyed, off kilter. We can sense it from the very beginning, with a score drawn from the deep chords of an organ and from Zamphir's Peruvian nose flute or whatever it is. When there is no music on the sound track we can hear the buzzing of flies or the soft growls of wind about the stone mansion.

Why, when Miranda is leaving for the picnic, does she tell another that she's not coming back. And after all, what DID happen to those missing girls? Applause for director Peter Weir and for others of his ilk, like Nicholas Roeg, who have the courage to put out a movie that isn't all hustle and bustle, that takes care to establish an atmosphere that is almost a character in itself, that lingers over the contrast between elegant, lacy civilization and the indifferent implacability of nature's raw rocks.

Everything begins and ends at the right time and place, one of the characters insists repeatedly, and the world of movies have a place for films like this that challenge and mystify rather than just tickle your glands.

I'd never seen this one before but knew of Peter Weir's work as director and of course it didn't disappoint. Weir makes a great deal out of a rather slim storyline and the air of mystery is second to none. The scenes of the girls exploring the rocks and their disappearance are incredibly eerie and suspenseful and yet somehow beautiful at the same time. The rest of the plot, surrounding the mystery and depicting the fallout at the girl's school, is equally interesting and engrossing. Watch out for WOLF CREEK's John Jarratt in a youthful role.

This is a very pretty movie--both the cinematography and music are well done (though the frequent use of pan pipes was an unusual choice and seemed a bit odd for an Australian film). And, the way the story was portrayed, it really did a good job of making you believe this was a true story and not fictional (which it is).

So why isn't my score quite as high as other reviews? Well, there just isn't a whole lot of story here and the pacing, at times, is a little too slow and drawn out for my taste. It seems that since it isn't based on a true story, they could have interjected a little more suspense or mystery--especially in hashing out what occurred to Sara at the end of the picture. Still, it is very well made and quite unusual. All in all, a very good film--particularly the haunting score played by Zamfir.