Picnic at Hanging Rock (2018) picnic costumes

In the Valentine’s Day photograph taken at the start of the series, these white dresses make the students look pristine. They are picture-perfect young ladies ready to enter society.

But after the girls go missing, the dresses that once contributed to a picture of innocence takes on an ethereal, intangible quality.

As Irma, Marion and Miranda shed their gloves and boots, delving deeper into Mount Diogenes, they seem to gain something new – a sense of wildness, freedom, and mysterious purpose. As the natural fabrics of their dresses catch the hot, bright sun that shines over Dja Dja Wurrung land, they almost seem to disappear into the landscape.

“We’re here, at last. We’ve escaped,” Miranda tells Ms McCraw with an eerie confidence when the group arrives at Mount Diogenes. Through flashbacks, dream sequences and memories that depict the girls like this, the audience’s perspective on the disappearance starts to change. We start to ask: is their disappearance a tragedy – or, as Miranda says, an escape?