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Innocence (2004)
Lucile Hadzihalilovic apparently announced that her debut film would be a horror film. Instead, she has created something more subtly disturbing; a boarding school film which behaves like a horror film. The Company of Wolves without the wolves. From the lingering opening shots of bubbling water and echoing gothic tunnels, Hadzihalilovic uses the trappings of a horror film, especially the claustrophobic camera angles, to create an atmosphere of creeping apprehension.
Iris is the newest pupil – or inmate – of a bizarre boarding school for girls, in which girls arrive in coffins, wear coloured ribbons corresponding to their ages and in which the eldest disappear each night for reasons at first kept secret. The school grounds are a mixture of wild, natural woodland and swimming lake, gothic buildings and tunnels and a path lit oddly by electric lights. They are not permitted to leave, or have any contact with the outside world. There are only two teachers, Mademoiselle Edith, the science teacher, and Mademoiselle Eva, the ballet teacher (played by the beautiful Marion Cotillard) and a handful of servants.
The film is essentially a mystery, reminiscent in some ways of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Why are the girls there? What happens when they leave? It is not spoiling the film to say that while some questions are answered, even more are raised. In a way, when some questions are answered it is almost disappointing. In raising so many questions, leaving so many pauses and hinting at so many possibilities, the film leaves it up to the viewer to imagine the outcome.
The title is deliberately chosen. The film has attracted some criticism for its potential to appeal to paedophiles – in other words there is occasional nudity. But surely pre-pubescent girls stripping off to swim is entirely innocent – it is only our adult perceptions and fears that turn this into something sinister. Innocence itself is explored in the behaviour of the girls – the youngest girls form innocent but jealous attachments to the eldest. A jealous orange ribboned girl throws rocks at Iris towards the start of the film, and for a while you wonder whether the film is going to turn into a Lord of the Flies style scenario. The innocence in the film is the innocence of nature, it is sometimes cruel and not always good.
It is the style, atmosphere and the mystery which make this film what it is; I don’t know how well it would stand up to a second viewing, but with so many unanswered questions it needs one nonetheless. In a film like this it is hard to tell whether things unexplained are deliberate or are flaws in the plotting, but the way missing girls were replaced was never really made clear which bothered me slightly.
Boarding school drama, horror film, gothic fantasy, mystery, allegory for girlhood, exploration of innocence, an exercise in style and misdirection – Innocence is all of these.
4.5/5
Lucile Hadzihalilovic apparently announced that her debut film would be a horror film. Instead, she has created something more subtly disturbing; a boarding school film which behaves like a horror film. The Company of Wolves without the wolves. From the lingering opening shots of bubbling water and echoing gothic tunnels, Hadzihalilovic uses the trappings of a horror film, especially the claustrophobic camera angles, to create an atmosphere of creeping apprehension.
Iris is the newest pupil – or inmate – of a bizarre boarding school for girls, in which girls arrive in coffins, wear coloured ribbons corresponding to their ages and in which the eldest disappear each night for reasons at first kept secret. The school grounds are a mixture of wild, natural woodland and swimming lake, gothic buildings and tunnels and a path lit oddly by electric lights. They are not permitted to leave, or have any contact with the outside world. There are only two teachers, Mademoiselle Edith, the science teacher, and Mademoiselle Eva, the ballet teacher (played by the beautiful Marion Cotillard) and a handful of servants.
The film is essentially a mystery, reminiscent in some ways of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Why are the girls there? What happens when they leave? It is not spoiling the film to say that while some questions are answered, even more are raised. In a way, when some questions are answered it is almost disappointing. In raising so many questions, leaving so many pauses and hinting at so many possibilities, the film leaves it up to the viewer to imagine the outcome.
The title is deliberately chosen. The film has attracted some criticism for its potential to appeal to paedophiles – in other words there is occasional nudity. But surely pre-pubescent girls stripping off to swim is entirely innocent – it is only our adult perceptions and fears that turn this into something sinister. Innocence itself is explored in the behaviour of the girls – the youngest girls form innocent but jealous attachments to the eldest. A jealous orange ribboned girl throws rocks at Iris towards the start of the film, and for a while you wonder whether the film is going to turn into a Lord of the Flies style scenario. The innocence in the film is the innocence of nature, it is sometimes cruel and not always good.
It is the style, atmosphere and the mystery which make this film what it is; I don’t know how well it would stand up to a second viewing, but with so many unanswered questions it needs one nonetheless. In a film like this it is hard to tell whether things unexplained are deliberate or are flaws in the plotting, but the way missing girls were replaced was never really made clear which bothered me slightly.
Boarding school drama, horror film, gothic fantasy, mystery, allegory for girlhood, exploration of innocence, an exercise in style and misdirection – Innocence is all of these.
4.5/5