This post includes a character analysis of Miss G, the main antagonist of the 2009 film “Cracks”.
Directed by Jordan Scott, the 2009 psychological drama stars Eva Green as Miss “G” Gribben.
Cracks
In Cracks, Miss G is a diving teacher at a girls boarding school. Her adventurous, charismatic, and unconventional teaching style earned the admiration of many of her students. The teacher often encourages the girls to follow their passions and dreams.
Nevertheless, Miss G and her students’ lives take a turn with the arrival of Fiamma, a beautiful aristocrat from Spain. The new girl’s presence seems to unsettle her peers, and the teacher herself develops a strong fixation for Fiamma.
The teacher’s fixation turns into a dangerous obsession. Miss G makes countless efforts to win Fiamma’s affection, but nothing seems to work. One night, the teacher takes advantage of an unconscious Fiamma. The day after, the aristocrat threatens to tell the truth about the sexual assault. As a result, Miss G manipulates her students to turn against Fiamma.
Fuelled by jealousy and resentment, the girls chase after Fiamma. The confrontation ends in tragedy. Nonetheless, Fiamma did not die in the girls’ hands. The culprit behind Fiamma’s death is actually Miss G. The teacher refused to give the girl her asthma medicine when she needed it the most.
Note: For those who are interested, here is another article discussing what happened at the end of Cracks.
Miss G Character Analysis in “Cracks”
Cracks presents Miss G as a charismatic teacher who is venerated by her students. She is a diving instructor and a former student of the girls boarding school. But underneath her “cool” persona lies a dangerous individual with an impulsive dark side.
In terms of personality, Miss G is as charming as she is deceiving and manipulative. As an adult, the teacher tried really hard to project the aura of an enigmatic person, someone who is beautiful and somewhat exotic. However, those were all lies because Cracks implies that she never really left the school. This means that the woman is not the globetrotter that she claims to be, among other things.
From the very beginning, it’s clear that Miss G is not a conventional teacher. Not only that, but she is not a very good adult either. In retrospect, there were a lot of small details in Cracks indicating that the teacher is not as perfect as she appears to be. For instance, the midnight “skinny dipping” with her students. What started as a seemingly innocent activity was actually one of the first red flags about Miss G.
Miss G’s Character Evolution
Miss G is one of the most deceiving characters in Cracks. At first, she appears to be a super cool teacher leading a group of young girls down the right path. It turns out that everything that the woman said about herself is a lie. All her adventures were stories from famous books.
Telling white lies doesn’t make Miss G a criminal, but sexual assault and murder do. The teacher was apparently a normal person up until Fiamma’s arrival at the school. However, the moment that woman laid eyes on Fiamma, she became a completely different person.
What started off as admiration quickly turned into something else. The feelings that Miss G has for Fiamma are a mix between lust and obsession. So what attracted the teacher to Fiamma? Well, the girl was very different from her other students. The young aristocrat was pretty and cultured, which made the teacher completely smitten.
The tricks that Miss G uses to keep the girls wrapped around her finger don’t really work on Fiamma. The new girl was able to spot the teacher’s lies right away because she read the same books that Miss G used to fabricate her stories, and she was not shy about exposing the teacher. That, of course, hurt Miss G because she doesn’t want the girls to know that she’s a fraud.
To prevent Fiamma from further exposing her lies, Miss G tries to befriend the young aristocrat. However, the teacher’s efforts are in vain, and Fiamma begins to feel increasingly creeped out by her. The constant rejections from her object of desire drove Miss G to the limit, and the teacher ends up doing the unthinkable. First, she sexually assaults Fiamma. Then she tries to silence her.
Is Miss G the villain in “Cracks”?
Miss G is a perpetrator, she took advantage of a young girl. There is no nice way to say it, but Miss G raped Fiamma. Not only that, but the teacher also committed murder. However, the woman didn’t do the dirty job herself, she manipulated some of her students to do it. And that was despicable, to say the least.
One could say that Miss G is a wannabe who can’t take rejection. Nevertheless, there is something even more troubling about the teacher than her ego, and that would be her mind. Actually, her mental health. Mental illness is often insidious. There were no or very few signs pointing out that the woman had any sort of mental problem. That is, until the audience sees her shopping for bread.
Judging by the teacher’s white lies and the way she interacted outside the school, it’s very probable that Miss G has never actually left the school, let alone traveled the world. In a way, Fiamma is everything that the teacher wanted to be but never became. That might explain her obsession with the young aristocrat.
Miss G spent years trying to build a cooler image of herself. That was possible because young girls are easy to influence, and the teacher definitely took advantage of her students naivety. Despite all the effort, the woman was just fooling herself. Having said that, Miss G is not an evil person, but she is very sick. The real villain in Cracks is jealousy and envy among girls.
Final Thoughts
Miss G is a complex character who reminds the audience about the dangers of obsession and abuse of power. What started as an innocent fascination quickly turned into a dangerous obsession with tragic consequences. The teacher went from wanting Fiamma’s affection to wanting to kill her.
In addition, what began as a simple act of intimidation from the girls toward Fiamma ended up in tragedy for the young aristocrat. Although both the girls and Miss G are responsible for Fiamma’s death, the teacher’s part in the events might be heavier. After all, the woman was the main instigator and the adult, meaning she should’ve known better.
