| Director | Carol Morley |
|---|---|
| Budget | £750,000 |
| Box office | $663,738 |
In 1969, Lydia and Abbie are best friends and classmates at an English girls' school. Lydia has a fixation on Abbie and has recently begun to explore more of her sexuality. After having sex with Lydia's brother Kenneth in an attempt to abort her pregnancy with another boy, Abbie begins to suffer from fainting spells, going into convulsions after a stint in detention with Lydia which leads to her death. Following Abbie's burial, Lydia begins suffering from similar fainting spells, and it soon becomes an epidemic, with numerous girls and a young teacher at the school spontaneously passing out for no more than a few seconds. Lydia becomes convinced that the administration must take action, much to the chagrin of the school's principal.
When an assembly is disrupted by a mass fainting episode, the school is temporarily shut down and all affected students are hospitalised and psychoanalysed. When no cause for the fainting spells is discovered, the school is reopened and Lydia is expelled. That same night, Lydia loses her virginity when she has sex with Kenneth, to whom she had developed an incestuous attraction after Abbie's death. Lydia's agoraphobic and neglectful mother Eileen catches them in the act and angrily kicks Kenneth out of the house before launching into a tirade against her own daughter, revealing that she and Kenneth are only half-siblings; Lydia herself being the product of rape.
Distraught by this revelation, Lydia flees the house as Eileen follows her, the first time she has ventured outside the house in over sixteen years. Searching for Lydia, Eileen is overcome with flashbacks of her rape before she locates Lydia, who, in a breakdown over Abbie's death, has climbed to the top of a tree near the school where she and Abbie spent their time together. Lydia challenges her mother's lack of maternal affection before losing her footing and falling into the lake. A frantic Eileen ventures into the water, finding her daughter’s seemingly drowned body and cradles her in despair. Lydia unexpectedly regains consciousness as they embrace and reconcile.