Innocence

(2006)

Directed by

Lucile Hadzihalilovic

Review by Zach Saltz

A self-proclaimed connoisseur of French cinema, I went in to the theater eagerly anticipating a film which I had deliberately stayed away from reading about, and afterwards, left the theater reminding myself how truly great French films can be, if done well.  And Innocence is a very well-done film, to say the least.

It is a strange, hypnotic film that only the French could have made.  It has a Saroyanesque evocation of innocuous childhood (reminiscent of the films of Truffaut and Malle) while maintaining a strictly elegiac form of montage clearly channeling Zéro de Conduite (1933) and occasionally David Lynch.  It is also sometimes downright terrifying, but not because of a guy with a chainsaw popping out of nowhere -- it is truly scary in a dream-like, surreal atmosphere where reality seems secondary to the importance of what is unseen and cannot consciously be contemplated.

The story is set in some kind of secluded camp in the middle of the woods for young girls, where the newest campers arrive in coffins with lids ceremonially opened with all the other girls present.  Through the course of the film, we will know three of the girls intimately.  The first girl, Iris, gets out of her coffin and is given a red ribbon to put in her hair.  The ribbons signify age and authority in the small group; the oldest girl wears violet, the second-oldest wears blue, etc.  The camp is divided into five sets of six girls, and Iris and the other “reds” go to classes to study ballet and biology.  The children are free to do what they wish outside of class except for escaping the grounds, which is difficult to do anyway with the presence of an high wall surrounding the area.  The girls are fed Orwellian phrases like “Obedience is the only path to happiness” to prevent them from considering escape from the school.

The camp scene is often portrayed as luminous and idyllic, with the summer sun shining down on the girls as the run around or swim in the lake.  But there is something profoundly dark and ominous lurking beneath this façade of flowery innocence.  There is a rumble underneath the surface (literally) and the filmmakers skillfully employ confounding underwater images accompanied by distant sounds of thunder and lightning to establish a sobering and occasionally terrifying atmosphere.  Watching the shots of the girls confidently walk into the black and imposing woods, I was reminded of M. Night Shyamalon’s terribly misguided The Village (2004) and how much better this film was at eliciting feelings of grave apprehension.

We will eventually meet a “blue” girl, Alice, as she desperately tries to impress and convince the headmistress to set her free outside the walls, and “violet” Bianca, who has the unfortunate duty of uncovering the disturbing circumstance surrounding the imprisonment of the prepubescent inmates.  The three girls, Iris, Alice, and Bianca, are essentially the same symbolic being, since the story is simply showing progression over a single year rather than many different years.  This is an effective maneuver since we are given a wider scope of characters and rising action to contemplate.  There is also a wide employment of exceptionally imaginative set pieces, adding to a dollhouse-like stage motif; there is one scene, in particular, where some girls climb through a grandfather clock, that left me breathless in its innovation.

Hadzihalilovic, unknown to me, dedicated the film “à Gaspar”, presumably referring to Gaspar Noe, director of the brutally violent and extremely controversial Irreversible (2002).  Of course, the two films are very different in story and texture, but comparisons may be drawn, I suppose, for their unyielding battering toward its audience.  I imagine some people will be furious at the confusing nature of the story and its resolve; but like Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001), the film works most effectively as a dream, with facets and settings that go unexplained, but to truthfully understand their significance would be arbitrary.  They’re there to create an austere setting, and without their presence, the movie is so basic, bare-boned -- perhaps the usage of these mystifying elements is what separates mainstream American fare from thought-provoking French cinema.

To tell you the truth, I don’t think I will ever be able to forget Innocence.  It’s one of those films, like a work of Lynch’s or Alejandro Jadorowsky’s, that, no matter how ravaged, disgusting, or profoundly confounding it is, will never escape my mind -- perhaps precisely for those reasons aforementioned.  It’s obviously not a film for the faint of heart or stomach, as I have tried to subtly convey in this response, but the shattering effect it had on me was unmatched by any film I’ve seen in the past few years. 

Rating:

# 90 on Top 100

# 3 of 2006