In 1954 in Christchurch two fifteen year-old girls, Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker, murdered Parker’s mother. After some five years in jail the women were released and both left New Zealand. Their assumed identities were a mystery until, quite recently, Anne Perry (a successful crime novelist) was revealed to be Juliet Hulme. Anne Perry – Interiors is a documentary portraying the daily life of Perry/Hulme, now in her seventies.
The movie theatre was near full, which I guess is to be expected given the local connection. The audience was predominately elderly too, and I couldn’t help wondering if perhaps someone in the audience actually knew Parker&Hulme at the time of the murder…
It was a fascinating glimpse into her life. It was part fly-on-the-wall doco, part one-sided conversation with Perry and members of her small but devoted entourage. This devotion perhaps attains worrying proportions in the form of Meg, Perry’s one friend. Meg, who lives just across the lane from Perry, said that she couldn’t move on until she had made Perry happy. Although the similarities weren’t pointed out, it was easy to see an echo of Pauline Parker’s devotion to Juliet Hulme in Meg’s devotion to Perry. Perry/Hulme is clearly a woman who arouses fierce loyalties in those around her.
Perry spends her days in her gorgeous rambling stone farmhouse in the barren Scottish countryside, working on her novels, being looked after by her brother (acting as her secretary), typist, gardener, driver/odd-jobs man, and two or three dogs. It was interesting to see her work process: she does all her writing sitting in an old leather reclining chair, writing by hand on a pad resting on a book resting on a giant cushion resting on her lap. She gives the hand-written pages to her typist, who types them up on a computer in the wonderful loft/study – a long thin room with steeply-sloping wall/ceilings that are interrupted regularly by skylights. The typist frequently has trouble reading Perry’s handwriting. (“I’ve gotten used to it, but sometimes I can’t make out a word. And sometimes Anne can’t either.”)
Despite her devoted and doting entourage, the film imparts a sense that Perry is very much alone. This seems to be deliberate on the part of the doco makers, as there are lots of shots from outside the house showing Perry inside in a room alone, and long shots of her walking alone along country lanes.
Most of the doco is about her life now, with only occasional veiled references to “that thing that happened”. Right at the end Perry talks a little about the murder, claiming that she was convinced that Parker would kill herself if they didn’t perform the murder, and that she knew it was wrong but felt she had no choice. Whether this was true or an after-the-fact rationalization I couldn’t decide.