Synopsis

At an isolated girls' boarding school in the 1930s, charismatic diving instructor Miss G inspires intense loyalty from her students. The arrival of Fiamma, an elegant and worldly Spanish boarder, disrupts the group's hierarchy and captures Miss G's attention. As admiration turns into jealousy and obsession, the school's carefully controlled social order begins to fracture, exposing its hidden desires and cruelty.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film is based on Sheila Kohler's 1999 novel of the same name. The book is set at a boarding school in South Africa during the 1960s, while the film relocates the story to a fictional island off the English coast in the 1930s.

• Production began in May 2008, with filming taking place primarily in Ireland, including locations in Dublin and County Wicklow. Some scenes were also filmed at Pinewood Studios in England.

• The film marked the feature debut of its filmmaker and was produced through a group of companies that included Element Pictures, Scott Free, Killer Films, and John Wells Productions.

• Ridley Scott and Tony Scott served as executive producers. The project also brought together Irish, British, Spanish, French, Swiss, and American production interests.

• The diving sequences required doubles, despite the young performers' interest in attempting the dives themselves.

• The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2009 and was also selected for the Times BFI London Film Festival.

• In the original novel, Fiamma is described as a fair-haired Italian girl. The film changes her nationality to Spanish and casts the character accordingly.

• A period detail is visible in Miss G's smoking scenes: she uses filtered cigarettes, although filtered cigarettes were not generally available during the era in which the story is set.