Innocence (2004)

Director: Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Writers: Lucile Hadzihalilovic, Frank Wedekind (novel)
Stars: Zoé Auclair, Lea Bridarolli, Bérangère Haubruge

In a creaky, dark mansion, in the middle of an idyllic green forest encircled by a gigantic stone wall, a group of very young girls gather around a coffin. Loosely adapted from an 1888 avant-garde novella, Innocence is set in a strange, dreamlike boarding school for girls. In this twisted fairy tale, everyone is dressed in white and the only adults are two severe teachers and a few old servants lurking in the shadows. No one is allowed to leave, or so it seems. The girls’ education consists solely of ballet and biology – they are being trained only to be pretty and to breed. They are also taught that “obedience is the only path to happiness.” If someone refuses to obey, they disappear in the middle of the night or are doomed to serve the other girls forever. This new feature from the partner and collaborator of Gaspar Noé is a coming-of-age story like no other. The film depicts a truly mysterious (and sometimes menacing) passage through adolescence with unsettling metaphorical implications. Lush CinemaScope imagery, stirring music by Janácek and Prokofiev and echoes of both Picnic at Hanging Rock and de Sade combine to make Innocence a penetrating and demanding new work.

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.

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