A pair of abused and neglected teenage girls almost get away with murder in Stanley M. Brooks’ Perfect Sisters, a riveting true-crime thriller based on the notorious “Bathtub Girls” case. Sisters Sandra (Abigail Breslin) and Beth (Georgie Henley) learned early in life that they had no one to depend on but each other. But when their addict mother Linda (Mira Sorvino) makes plans to move the girls in with her abusive lover, the girls’ situation becomes unbearable. Seeing no other way out, Sandra and Beth recruit their classmates to help them plan their mother’s murder. When the girls’ guilt spins out of control and they confess their involvement to friends, rumors that they are cold-blooded killers reach the ears of the authorities. Perfect Sisters is a harrowing and heartbreaking look at the teen subculture that nurtured the girls’ murderous fantasies and covered up for them after they committed an unthinkable crime. I sat down with director Stanley Brooks and actress Georgie Henley in Los Angeles.
Danny Miller: This film so reminded me of one of my favorite films of all time, Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures which was also based on a true story. Were you both familiar with that film?
Stanley M. Brooks: You may have noticed in the film that when she finally calls 911 after the murder, she says, “Were at 501 Jackson” — that was my little homage to Heavenly Creatures, because yes, that is a movie that really inspired me.
Georgie Henley: I haven’t seen it yet. I kind of felt that I couldn’t watch it while preparing for this role which is a very different story but I certainly plan to now.
You should! You and Abigail Breslin have a similar chemistry to Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey in that film. Stan, were you ever worried that people might think you were somehow glorifying these girls and their crime?
Stanley: I thought that if we stayed true with what actually happened and the fact that everyone in the story is a bit of a victim and a perpetrator that we would be on solid ground. We would certainly never glorify or condone what these girls did but on the other hand, as a parent myself, I was fascinated by how many adults had to abdicate their responsibility in order for this to happen: the Dad, the aunt, the school, the social worker, and of course, the mom who couldn’t get past her addiction and who let her boyfriend terrorize her daughter.
And they both start out as such likable characters.
I was lucky that I had two of the current film world’s most beloved young actors. I didn’t have to work very hard to make you fall in love with Georgie and Abby.
Georgie: It was funny because the first few days we were shooting in the high school and I felt like I was doing Mean Girls!
Or that you were in a John Hughes film with Molly Ringwald.
Exactly! I love those kind of 80s high school oddball comedies, they don’t make enough of those anymore. We felt like an oddball pack of rebels. But then we got to the other stuff and we were like, “Oh, this is so not Mean Girls!”
Stanley: We intentionally shot all the “hard stuff” at the end because we wanted the kids to first develop this sense of camaraderie and fun before they got into the dark material.
Georgie, was it hard to get in the head of someone who would do such a thing?
Georgie: I spent a lot of time thinking about how you would get to that point — what processes you would have to go through both mentally and emotionally to get there. One of the things I tried to do when I was preparing for the role was to not think about what it was like to be the daughter of an alcoholic or to commit murder, but more about what it is like to feel true betrayal and vulnerability and to be really hurt by someone. It was by no means an easy role or an easy shoot.
Mira Sorvino is such a great actress. I interviewed her last year and know what a devoted mother she is. This must have been difficult for her to play as well.
Stanley: She is a very devoted mother who now has four kids. I didn’t even know until afterwards that she was about a month pregnant when we were making the film! She was excited to do the part because she had never played somebody this damaged. Once she signed on, she went to Calabasas and found a bar where housewives hang out. She spent a few nights there with these women and by the time she got to us she had much of that behavior already locked up.
Did you have contact with any of the actual people from the case?
Amazingly, the Canadian press has lived up to the standard of never revealing the identity of minors involved in a crime. At the time, when Bob Mitchell was writing his book about the case, he created the fictional names of Sandra and Beth for the girls so we used those. They have never come forward but there’s a lot known about what happened and we stayed very true to the actual facts.
It’s fascinating how they could have gotten away with it but they gave themselves away by bragging about it on social media.
Georgie: The last two movies I’ve done — this and The Sisterhood of Night — both have a very prevalent focus on how social media can be a real curse and a way of making connections that are false. In this film, social media is kind of a way for them to disconnect from what they are really doing and pretend it’s some kind of game, and it’s also sort of like a subconscious cry for help. For me, I have completely shunned technology in my life, I would communicate by carrier pigeon if I could, so it was interesting for me to be in the shoes of this person where everything has to be documented.
I love hearing your beautiful voice but I must say you had a killer American accent in the film!
Thank you — I spent most of the film mumbling so that helped! But I had a really good dialogue coach in New York.
I love how they let you use your real accent once when your character does a “fake” British accent.
It’s funny because I’m from the north in England so I don’t have the most typical British accent so when I did that scene using my actual voice Stan was like, “No, you need to sound more British! You need to sound like Mary Poppins!”
You’re so great in the Narnia films which certainly have some dark threads in them, but this must have been a very different experience.
It was. I did play young Jane Eyre in a BBC series between the first two Narnia films and that was pretty dark but because I was so young at the time, it was like water off a duck’s back — you go home and don’t think about it. So this was definitely the first time where I really had to put myself in the psyche of someone who had genuine troubles.
And I imagine the experience of making a small independent film like this is very different from doing a huge blockbuster.
Completely! The filmmaking process is so different and it was great to not have the pressure of having to do something 90 times.
Ha — just try to do 90 takes on a small film.
Right. The attitude is that we only have a very small amount of time and we have to get this done so it has to be good! It’s a real live wire and very exciting.
And I’m sure working with someone as talented as Abigail Breslin has to help a lot.
Absolutely! I watched Little Miss Sunshine the other day which I absolutely loved. We had never met before so I’m very proud of our chemistry on-screen.
I assume many scenes in this film were challenging to shoot but that scene where you and Abigail are torn apart is painful to watch. Was that a difficult day?
We shot all the court stuff in one day and that was the only time when I came to set that I didn’t talk to anyone. Abby was the same, we were just in that space. You know what the worst part was? We were actually put in that holding cell — it was so claustrophobic and awful. I really can’t describe that day.
Stanley: We didn’t really rehearse that scene at all. I remember that they were wearing plastic prop handcuffs and on the first take they both snapped so we had to switch to real handcuffs!
Georgie: We had these poor stunt guys playing the guards who said, “It’s okay, do whatever you want, don’t worry about us.” They thought well, they are just these teenage girls, they can’t hurt us, but boy, were they wrong. We both went wild. There were no lines in that scene so all the words are just what we were feeling in the moment and what came out. I’m getting emotional now just talking about it!