Innocence

Innocence is an extraordinary film that explores its theme with such determined rigor one cannot help but be compelled and shocked by every moment. Innocence explores the period in girls' lives before they lose their Innocence and start adulthood. The mysterious school to which we are introduced through Tarkovskyesque images of flowing water becomes a dark and at times haunting manifestation of both the young girls' enforced Innocence as well as the setting for the film's mystery narrative in which we find ourselves desperate to see through the schools wooded grounds to some kind of epiphany.

Part of the success of Innocence is that it is able to confuse the viewer and forces the audience to confront their own ideas of Innocence and how we as adults should view images of Innocence. Images of the young girls at play should be easier to watch but this is an adult film with a predominately adult audience and the darkness of the films own geography plays with ones ideas of Innocence and the loss of it.

Extraordinary images, extraordinary performances, a great film.

Those who expect a straightforward plot with all the answers from Innocence will be disappointed. However, this "open for interpretation" is the strength of the film. This personal interpretation without doubt varies whether the viewer is male or female, child or an adult. Obviously a film about young girls opens differently to women/girls, who can possibly feel similarity with the characters, than to a male viewer who watches the set from the outside - from the darkened audience.

Personally, I saw the film as a demonstration how alien is the world of grown ups to children and how unexplainable many things remain. The film that is clearly shot from the viewpoint of the children and does not tell us much of the environment - answer the basic questions of what and why. Just as children are - and especially were - uninformed about the decisions concerning their life made by their parents/teachers/etc.

Technically the film is very well made, especially the lake shots where camera hovered just centimetres above the surface made me almost feel the water. Also the young actresses performed exceedingly well and felt very natural in their roles.

There can't be many films that occupy your mind for many days afterwards, make you read the book they are based on, and then watch them again.

"Innocence" is one of those films and it is both beautiful and intriguing at the same time. It is based on a book by Frank Wedekind called "Mine-Haha or the corporeal education of girls", the only published fragment of his unfinished novel "Hildalla". It was first published in 1901 and although beautifully written it has much darker undertones than the film with references to a body cult of youth and natural beauty which would later become exploited by Nazi culture.

The film is very much a metaphor for a childhood world which is in many ways separate but also protected from that of adults. It plays in an isolated Girls School their children enter at the time when they start to make their own independent experiences of the world around them and ends with the onset of puberty and attainment of menarche, both symbolising the emotional and physical end of childhood. The cinematography is beautiful and reminded me in many ways of Tarkovsky with its symbolism and haunting images. However, the story can seem a little simplistic and linear times and often appears to demand more depth from the young child actors than they could possibly deliver.

Nevertheless this is a very interesting and thought-provoking film and well worth watching. The French dialogue often has a musical quality and as long as you're prepared to watch this in a calm and unhurried state of mind this is very rewarding and unusual cinematic experience.

The final title, "for Gaspar" (Noe, director of IRREVERSIBLE), hints at the pedigree of the makers of this quite fascinating study of young girls on the cusp of adolescence.

Benoit Debie, the cinematographer of IRREVERSIBLE, shot the film.

Six year old Iris (Zoe Auclair) arrives at her new country school in a coffin. She becomes infatuated with twelve-year-old Bianca (Berangare Haubruge) who disappears each evening and returns in the morning. The girls spend most of their days studying ballet and preparing for an important exam.

The school is like a keep. The girls are encouraged to find happiness in obedience. Parents never visit. The world beyond its tall hedges exists like something within a dream.

Director Lucile Hadzihalilovic imbues every aspect of the film with a dreamy, meditative veneer. Shots of the pre-teen nymphs dancing, cartwheeling and splashing about in shallow water recall the grainy erotic imagery of David Hamilton's early feature films -- in particular, LAURA and BILITIS. The ballet sequences and striking compositions of solitary female figures in towering external landscapes owe a small debt to Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA and, to a lesser extent, his PHENOMENA. But this is not a deliberate softcore meditation on childhood sexuality. It is a metaphorical examination of how innocence is ruptured by its own curiosity.

The camera angles stress the importance and prominence of legs to a fetishistic degree. This focus is an organic extension of the girls' ballet training; a darker purpose for legs is indicated later in a chilling line of dialogue. Debie's cinematography emphasizes light and shade and is never pretty for its own sake.

The forest filled with lamps has a deliciously surreal, fairytale quality. The sequences where the girls dance for a faceless audience reminded me of one of MULHOLLAND DRIVE's most haunting sequences. The film's sound design also echoes the internal voids of the Lynchian world.

The film is not big on explanations and is a touch too slow at times, but it presents a thoroughly realized universe that is a stark metaphor for life's discoveries and disappointments. The performances possess perfect pitch and the tone remains both haunting and consistent.

What exactly is the film about? The girls may be in a purgatory of sorts, a resting place between life and death. Perhaps not. Perhaps they are in a holding pattern between childhood (innocence) and adulthood (a state requiring some loss of innocence), and when they manage to escape (succumbing to their pre-adolescent curiosity), they have forfeited their place in childhood forever. But only perhaps.

Amazing. Not for all tastes, to be sure, but infinitely intriguing and accomplished. Great movie. After all the previous not totally successful, or barely watchable or downright awful fantasy movies that have come out of France in the last five years or so, French cinema turns out to be capable of producing an intelligent, beautiful, original work of art with its roots in the fantasy field which is both a treat to the eye and intelligence, and a graphically arresting piece of movie making. The film, dealing with strange ongoings at a remote boarding school for young girls in a mystery-ridden forest somewhere, is incredibly catching, full of hypnotic images. It is indeed closer to the spirit of silent movies, in particular the German school of Fritz Lang, Murnau, Pabst, etc, than to most modern movies. But so brilliant and respectful in its approach that it soon makes you forget its origins. The are dreamlike visions by the dozen in Innocence, superior or equal to Lynch's best films, to Jackson's Heavenly Creatures, or to Jane Campion's cinema in its finer moments, for instance. A painter in terms of framing and composition, the director is always lifting the material up into poetry country. See it and you will not be left untouched. Few films ever reach that kind of weirdness and movie magic. It has no comparison. Really.