What we see
and what we seem
are but a dream...
a dream within a dream.

Picnic at Hanging Rock is one of the first Australian films to break through to an international audience, and it is also one of director Peter Weir's earliest and most important works. Weir would later go on to direct such giants as The Year of Living Dangerously, Dead Poet's Society, and The Truman Show. Picnic at Hanging Rock, mysterious and dream-like, confusing and open-ended, provides a glimpse of this prolific director's early vision.

The film begins with scenes from Appleyard College, an all girls school in a rural part of Australia. It is here that the ethereal realm of Victorian ladies comes to life. French lace, sunlit boudoirs, a row of girls tying their corsets, each scene is treated and framed almost as if it were a painting by Waterhouse or Botticelli, the woodwind driven soundtrack eerily luring the viewer into this delicate world of beauty.