Innocence (II) (2004) User Reviews

Haunting and imbued with a dreamy, meditative veneer

[fertilecelluloid · 8/10 · 5 August 2005]

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.

The IMDb Summary Of An Offbeat Boarding School Doesn't Even Come Close To It

[benjamin_lappin · 7/10 · 27 March 2008]

Offbeat? This film is so far removed from offbeat, that previous films described as offbeat are marching in military step unison. Innocence is a gorgeous composition of thought, sound and beauty which is utterly compelling to watch but challenges the viewing audience to a hard fought internal battle, raising questions within the viewer, in a William Blake-ish "Songs Of Innocence, Songs Of Experience" manner.

Undoubtedly the cinematography is some of the most striking that has been put to film certainly this side of the millennium, as Hadzihalilovic manages to compose wonderful shots of serene beauty within a hidden sense of malice and darkness. His symbolic use of colours is highly key to the understanding of the events, themes and emotions and aids the viewer immensely in being able to 'try' (and I emphasis the word) and dissect the layers of thought provoking connotations on the nature of innocence.

It's not always the most comfortable film to be viewing, as certain IMDb reviewers would hasten to claim it has "pedophilic tendencies", but I fear they're somewhat missing the point of the entire film; yes it is often at times difficult to view, but there is a purpose. William Blakes collection of poems on innocence and experience charts the replacing of the former with the latter. He shows us how innocence cannot be appreciated til you are experienced, but how experience completely taints any notion of innocence, and the same is with this precise film. These unsettling moments for us are only so because of the experience which we possess and have learnt throughout our existence, to the girls they don't see the same sins, pitfalls and traps we do, to them they are merely acting on instinct, as children do, in an innocent, cares- of the world-free way.

Thus the film charts the fall of innocence from the elder girls at the hauntingly constructed boarding school, and the continuing of the cycle through metamorphic symbolism, the circle of young life. Although it does make me question the use of the word "film". If I had but one criticism of the film, for all its mesmerising viewing and original premise it comes across more as a case study in innocence rather than a fully fledged story. While undeniably engaging and engrossing it lacks a certain spark, becoming more concerned with the ideas than the progression of any one story, to the extent where the ideas will be ringing in your head for days afterwards, but lacking a sense of resolution. Innocence would be an impressive debut solely on the basis of bravery alone for tackling such a notion, and so effectively, but the hallmarking of this 'case study' comes in the directors striking use of colours, symbolism and cinematography which I personally believe to have been unsurpassed in the films I've seen of recent years. Although you have been warned, the film is an intense experience which will not set well with everyone, but given that you have now been warned, so it's not as if you can claim you were innocent of that.

Oddity.

[duerden60 · 7/10 · 4 May 2006]

Reading a lot of the interesting comments people have made about this film, it's obvious most didn't understand it.I admit this includes me. I enjoy an original idea for a movie, one that makes you think, but if it is too obscure surely that defeats the object? A lot of the comments mention paedophiles, an overused word that's fashionable at the moment.I'm a bloke but ye Gods, these were tiny little girls and not sexual. Someone mentioned the bathing and said they were uncomfortable with it. Nobody was nude! If a scene such as this makes a person less than happy, I suggest it says a lot about that person's mind. David Hamilton's 'Bilitis' has a scene where a group of schoolgirls strip off and go gamboling in the sea, that is certainly done, (in my view) to titillate. Innocence isn't at all like that. Europeans such as the French and Germans have, it seems to me, a lot healthier attitude to sex than either the Brits' or the US who tend to look for an ulterior motive in anything. Having said that- There is an interview with director Lucile Hadzihalilovic on the DVD, in it she mentions words to describe the movie, such as paradise, prison, nature, appealing and interesting.She says the film is essentially sensual and a claustrophobic universe. Also says that there is no violence and nothing offensive in it. It interested me to hear her say that women would identify with it easier than men, as their own view of young girls will be evoked. For some that may be problematic, for others, not at all. Read in that what you will chaps. There are few sights more pleasurable than a happy female, (of any age.) I remember an old saying, - 'Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse.'

Girls in white ... until womanhood spoils the color scheme?

[SONNYK_USA · 6/10 · 5 March 2005]

If you've ever read the work of German symbolist writer Frank Wedekind then you may already have an idea about how difficult a text first feature writer-director Lucile Hadzihalilovic chose to adapt and execute. But execute she does for a good portion of the film until the rather obvious over-the-top conclusion that fails to answer many of the questions raised earlier.

That said, there is much to enjoy this film mainly due to its excellent cinemascope photography and the whole idea of an idyllic place where prepubescent girls are trained to be ballet dancers in order to enter the world as proper teenage women.

Since this is a symbolist writing, one can also entertain thoughts of purgatory (the characters are brought into being via a coffin), isolated same-sex societies (with one old man that is never explained), or some of the themes M. Night Shymalan explored in "The Village" with fear being used to keep a small population under control.

In any case, this film will provoke much discussion afterwards so bring your most knowledgeable cinema pals and dig in. Young girls in white outfits giggling and playing for two hours may not be everyone's simplification of the world at large, but in some ways it does sum up the dangers of segregated societies.

Not bad for a first film with extremely difficult material. A remarkable debut nonetheless.

Very interesting and impressive debut

[Mr Parker · 7/10 · 18 March 2005]

We watched this film during my Film History and Theory class this past Thursday and aside from shoddy presentation (the projector was absolutely horrible and displayed the film too dark), I have to say that I enjoyed this quite a bit. At first, I almost dismissed it as artsy, pretentious French cinema due to the very slow pace and methodical direction but it had this eerie quality to it that kept my eyes glued to the screen, anticipating what was yet to come. The story is told in a very abstract way and the story is never really laid out for you in a conventional manner. In truth, it is a very simple tale but told in an imaginative way. There was great imagery and the use of sound to create a mysterious environment was very well done. At times it reminded me of the films of David Lynch, (especially Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr.) and Gaspar Noe (Irreversible), which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. The acting by the principals is very good, considering that they consisted mainly of very young girls. The director managed to capture natural performances from all of them and having worked with children on films in the past, I have to applaud her efforts on this end as I know how difficult it can be to get them to give you the results you're looking for. From a negative stance, the film runs just a bit too long and the pacing could've been trimmed a little to make it run a bit faster and leaner. There were stretches where the film felt like it was never going to end. In the end, I would definitely recommend this to those who appreciate art-house cinema as this caters directly to them. This was an impressive debut for Ms. Hadzihalilovic and I am definitely curious to see what she comes up with next.

RATING: ***1/2 out of *****.

Thought-provoking and beautiful film

[ThomasKus · 9/10 · 28 February 2006]

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.

An Insight into Childhood

[sileas451 · 7/10 · 19 February 2011]

This film was refreshingly original - if not in terms of theme then certainly in cinematography. The scenes are haunting, mesmerising and evoke memories of one's own childhood, little flashes and reminders of what being a child used to feel like.

The film is about girlhood and loss of innocence and is told primarily from the perspective of the girls themselves. There is an air of mystery and magic in this film that represents how uncertain and mysterious life is for children. Some things in the film are explained; most are not. However, this is deliberate. The girls find things out by peering through cracks in the doors, by listening to private conversations, by listening to what the other girls tell them about what is true and what is not true. The scene where Iris stumbles upon two adults in a dark room with a syringe is not explained and nor are the rumours of severe punishment for breaking the rules proved false or true, because these things are never clarified when we are children.

Being a child is frustrating because so much is kept from you; you catch snatches of whispered conversation and you discuss what you have heard with other children, often coming up with some very unlikely theories, which you believe because you are a child and still believe in fantasy. Making everything even more uncertain is that adults often lie to you to make you do what you need to do, at your stage in life. ("Don't watch too much television or your eyes will go square!" or, in the film, "Obedience is the only route to happiness"). This sense of mystery and uncertainty, of being unsure of what is real and not real, what to believe and what not to believe, and of being endlessly curious about the unknown but equally too frightened to break these unexplained rules, is something which 'Innocence' captures perfectly.

While this film is certainly not flawless - the short skirts also made me feel a little uncomfortable, even though I suspect the reason for them may have been to highlight the girls' ignorance of their own sexuality, their innocence, so to speak - however, there are many aspects of this film which are great.

Exquisite Metaphorical Transcendent Film making

[o_cubitt · 10/10 · 7 November 2004]

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.

Where a ballet school for girls mirrors the demands of society.

[RJBurke1942 · 6/10 · 2 April 2015]

This story is billed as a mystery drama. At the opening scene - concerning a very much alive young girl arriving in a coffin at a ballet school for girls - we immediately know something's wrong with this picture (no pun intended): nobody ever arrives in a coffin on first day of school. We also implicitly know, from the IMDb page, this is not a Gothic terror movie with ghouls, vampires and sacrificial offerings. Moreover, we know, soon after the girl's arrival, this ballet school is way out of the ordinary; so much so, it's impossible to accord the school, staff and students any measure of actual reality. And, there's no suggestion this effort is a fantasy - although it could be, at a stretch.

Ballet, as we know, is primarily for girls; boys are not even permitted at this particular school. Boys, as we know, get to roam free from home, generally; girls must stay within these school grounds, their temporary home, always. And, at this school, there is a strict daily regime which, although full of pleasant, mundane tasks and activities, is still rigidly controlled by the staff. Conformity is paramount; dissidence is strongly discouraged, even punished. If it wasn't so idyllic, it would be suffocatingly annoying and depressing.

The story has a mix of protagonists, each of whom is moving through a certain period of their imprisonment, beginning with Iris (Auclair), the girl who arrives in the coffin. We then meet Selma (Lalieux) who has been there for a bit and who is every bit the dissident trouble-maker. We next encounter Alice (Bridarolli), an older girl who is perhaps close to being "chosen" by the arch- antagonist Headmistress (Marchand). But, chosen for what? And throughout, we follow Bianca (Haubruge), a senior who eventually leaves the school through a tortuous process, and who finally, with four other "graduating" girls, discovers exactly what she and they have been training for, year after tedious year....

Considering the setting, the simple but unsettling daily routine, and the all female ensemble, I'd suggest this story is a bizarre allegory which explores the development and enforced channeling of young girls into sex objects within our real world. It achieves that goal within the prison-like confines of the much lauded skills of ballet that the girls learn and practice daily, monotonously, at the school which is enclosed completely within a high brick wall. At every moment, the girls are both prisoners of time, space and the demands of the staff. Hence, to that extent, this story is a distant cousin to the school regime we can recall in Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975).

I'll leave you to discover the nature of the girls' graduation at your leisure, literally, because the pacing of this story is almost glacial. Necessarily, in line with the allegorical nature of the narrative, sexual innuendo is - if not rampant, beginning with rivers of water - pervasive throughout; indeed, some might infer overtones of pedophilia, occasionally. In fact, I think they are all central to the thematic underpinnings that the director, Hadzihalilovic, is presenting to the viewer. Unhappily for this viewer, at denouement there are no surprises, even to the final, inevitable scene.

The photography is often dark, almost creepy, shadowy, fuzzy at times, and accompanied by discordant, rumblings sounds from time to time; it's no accident it will remind viewers of movies from David Lynch who, I think, is the better story-teller and director, however. There is no physical horror and violence, though: only the violence and horror done to the female persona in the name of patriarchy, societal stability and bliss.

Recommended for viewers who appreciate Lynchian-style movies. Six out of ten.

April 2, 2015.

Moving Into

[tedg · 6 February 2010]

"Institute Benjamenta" folded into "Picnic at Hanging Rock"

"Maladolescenza" folded into "Stalker"

"Yume" folded into "Drowning with numbers"

"Au revoir les enfants" folded into "Suspiria"

"Sex and Lucia" folded into "Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary"

These movements formed into a star. That star subtracted from the lid of a coffin, inside which no one moves. Outside of which, a world approaches.

+++

I would like to steer you to this film. I do think it works. I do think it will penetrate and bond. The reason is the absolute trust in the image. There is very little we are told, and always less that could be. All the spoken narrative is pared, together with the context and explanation. Everything you get, you get through the eye. Narrative by eye allows the optic nerve to awaken explicit reasoning abilities that usually are dormant. The nerve is both channel to the brain and brainlike.

In most of us, it takes a while for these reasoning abilities to awake. Some of us are blessed with a shorter time, some take longer. All of us should get there by the time of the ballet performances, probably the weakest part of this construction. But get there you will, because there is nothing else to stand on.

+++

Bright Star did one image much better, this visual butterfly poetry of unknown future of presence. But the business here with the hair ribbons is so precious that I will keep an image of rainbow discovery of place of self with me all my life. That alone will change the way you dream.

+++

It helped me enormously to have seen Marie Cotillard in some other powerful roles before seeing here her as the mistress of the place. All of her projections in the world outside this movie were imposed on her similar projections as a character outside the world of the "school."

+++

Since there are fumbles, let me point to the one that I noticed. Water plays a key role here. We open by flowing with (not watching, but in) a powerful natural waterfall. We end with similar, but woman-made fountain that carries us away. In between, the place of the film is characterized by its lake. The senior girl who leaves every night into hormonal mystery walks into rain. There are glistening, moist tunnels under the place, that the younger girls can only wonder about by peering through an occluding grate.

Learning to swim in the lake is conflated into learning to dance like a butterfly. All of this is heavy investment in image. Each time we touch water, the cinematography is striking. But there is no coherence. A more mature filmmaker, even an intuitive like Herzog, would have worked on this, the visual narrative coherence in the architecture of cinematic water.

It was missing, and it told me that the filmmaker wears an orange ribbon.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

Like getting underwear for Christmas...

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 19 December 2013]

"Innocence" is set in a creepy school in the middle of no where where girls are raised in a bizarre manner and 'disappear' once they near puberty. Who these girls are, why they no longer have families and what it's all about is completely vague until the ending.

This movie reminds me of Christmas when I was a kid. I'd see all the presents under the tree and would get excited. However, when the 'big present' was finally opened, it ended up being a sweater or some new underwear!! This is my reaction to "Innocence". Throughout the movie, you are filled with excitement and wonder. You also thing of all the wonderful twists and meaning....only to get nothing once you finally get to the end...like underwear! I understand there's a lot of symbolism to this one, but I just felt like it was a gigantic waste of my time. And, to save you all the trouble, it's all about puberty for girls and the isolation. There's a tad more to it than this---but not much. And, as it appears to be a horror movie and ISN'T, I hope you think twice (or thrice) before watching.

An impressive look trough the young kids lives and fears

[arrozm · 9/10 · 18 August 2010]

Before jumping into the story itself, I have to say I was blown away by the imagery and sound of this movie. The scenarios are, at the same time, breathtakingly beautiful and deeply dark, to a point of making you uncomfortable. The old, rusty lamps that mark the ways trough the woods are an important detail in the creation of the dark ambiance. The soundtrack is in no way inferior, and as others said, strongly inspired by David Lynch work.

All this translates into one of the main points of this movie, which is showing on the big screen the contradictions of kids lives at that age. The girls are told to be happy, and they spend a lot of time playing outside, on the woods and the lake. On the other hand, they are subject to a demanding education (which is depicted in the movie as ballet lessons), which is many times scary, dull, and somewhat pointless.

One of the interesting lines of the story if the fact that the only purpose of being in the school seems to be getting out of there. There is no clear goal, and girls seem to don't deeply understand why are they there (Iris asks several times if and when can she leave and there's never a clear answer to her question). At a point, one of the young girls asks an older one if the reason for one of the teachers having a physical problem on her legs is the result of punishment for trying to leave the school. I love this dialog, because it shows two different characteristics of the young kids: the uncertainty related to why they must be there and when will they be able to leave, and the weird and somewhat surreal stories and fears the young minds are able to create.

The movie also shows us that all this is scary enough to the point that some kids can't handle it. There are two very sad situations in the story. The first is when the lonely, scared and violent girl shows us she's so afraid of the challenges she faces that she ends up getting out of the school the only way she can: by drowning herself on the lake. I believe this tries to map the few kids we all knew in our schools that started being subject of bad influences, having a violent behavior, taking drugs, and tearing their life apart to a point of no return.

The second situation is the girl that fails to be chosen. First of all, it's never really clear what it means to be chosen. What seems obvious is that, whatever it means, it's not something that is necessarily or entirely good. My interpretation is being chosen means going to a more demanding school. It may be good because more difficult challenges keep those kids interested, but it may also backfire, crushing the kids under extreme pressure from teachers and parents. Anyway, this girl really wants to be the one, and she even tries to have extra ballet classes so she can practice more than the others. When she faces the fact that other girl is chosen, she collapses, enters an weird depressed, almost catatonic state, and a few days later, she runs away from school and she's never seen again. Maybe she went to look for a place where her talent is acknowledged, or maybe she just snapped and tried to run away from the fact she's not the best student. We don't know, but it's very easy to map this to some unfortunate and real situations where kids collapse under the pressure, specially in demanding societies like Japan.

Unlike other reviewers, I don't find this movie to be inappropriate in what relates to the young girl's nudity. This being said, there's one sex-related scene that I believe it's the only one in the movie that is meant to be, which is the glove one. One day before leaving the school, Bianca finds a (velvet?) glove in the theater, that comes from the "adult" world (it belongs to an adult that left the glove behind on her seat). She keeps the glove, and a few moments later we see her using it and feeling the glove's fabric on her legs. I believe this scene marks the end of the innocence, and depicts Bianca starting to get curious about her own sexuality, which is something that usually starts to happen at about her age. I love the metaphor of her hand not being the hand of a child any more, but an adult one, symbolized by the glove. I believe the glove sequence is a master piece by itself, considering how beautifully and non-graphically the issue was handled, and of course, how tricky shooting a scene like this can be in a way that won't shock the audience.

Also, I think the last scenes are very strong and important. First, it's deeply touching to see the contradictory feelings on the teacher's faces when saying goodbye to the girls for the last time. I remember this from my time as a kid, when we ended the 4th grade and switched schools. Teachers are proud and happy to have helped the young girls be ready for the next stage of their lives, and at the same time almost crying because they know that in a few months the girls have moved on and forgot about them forever. It's also important to see the new school, that looks more like a modern office park, with a lot of light (the dark days are over), happy boys and girls playing, water fountains, and no walls or limits. It's a new life for those girls. They moved on from their protected, walled and seemingly pointless environment to the open, real world, where they'll be free to make their own decisions, meet new friends (including boys) and go on with their lives.

Innocence and its loss, in a beautifully directed world

[thektway · 7/10 · 9 March 2006]

I walked out of this film being the only one of a group of 5 with any clasp of what it was about. That in itself may say something about my own innocence. Many reviews of this film seem to shout 'Paedophiles!' at the reader, to me this is an interesting reaction to a film, with near fairy tale qualities, which explores themes of innocence,childhood and how our own curiosity can destroy these. Every theme in this seemingly idyllic (and beautifully captured) girls school will represent a reason for one viewers loss of innocence, and when the film drags in places I do wonder if this intentionally mirrors a child's own impatience to 'grow up'. Perhaps it is the viewers lack of innocence that adds to the films underlying eeriness..........or perhaps its that rumbling noise?

Beautiful yet disappointing

[foxcub · 4/10 · 26 June 2005]

While beautifully shot and executed, Innocence fails to deliver what it begins. The audience is given visuals from the beginning of girls arriving to the school in coffins, yet never is it explained why (or maybe I just didn't get it). The story had a dark potential and hints, but fails to deliver on them. While a film about the transition from young girl to sexually awakened woman, the viewer is left cheated. Even in a respectful crowd at the Sydney Film Festival, someone shouted "Shit!!" at the end of the film. This film is not "shit" but just frustrating as it does not leave the audience with a feeling of time well spent.

Ten Colors: White

[writers_reign · 6 November 2004]

We're talking seriously bizarre here. Quite by chance I attended a screening which was introduced by the director who asked us not to try to figure it out but just immerse ourselves in it. Some may say that that was a cop out but don't look at me, I never said a word. I don't know the source material - a short story by Franz Wedekind - so I don't know how much help it would be in making sense of what plot there is. The only way to deal with it is to describe it and if that includes Spoilers so be it. After an ambiguous opening shot held for about 30 seconds which could be an underwater shot of an empty jacuzzi in full spate or stryofoam melting under a gentle flame, lungs filling with liquid or practically anything you like we cut to a room empty except for a coffin on a trestle. In a moment about five pairs of legs surround the coffin. The legs are all female, mini-skirted and the owners have an average age of around 8 to 10 years. It's a paedophile's wet dream in spades. One of the girls produces a golden key and unlocks the coffin. Inside is another girl of roughly the same age, apparently dead. After a beat she opens her eyes and the other girls help her out and tell her that this is her new home. So now we're thinking Afterlife-lite, Heaven or Hell, the choice is yours. Once we see the girls in full shot the most startling thing is their costume; identical white tops and white miniskirts which, over the intervening days, weeks, months, whatever, NEVER get dirty. The House -if that is what it - is appears to be in the center of a forest complete with lake and rowboat and a road about one color grade down from Yellow Brick that leads we know not where. It COULD be a girl's boarding school but the only lessons we ever see involve physical exercise and/or dance. Of the three adults on the scene one is a middle aged woman who seems to be a combination cook-housekeeper and the other two younger women seem to be, for want of a better word, choreographers. One girl attempts to row the boat to whatever outside world exists and it fills with water, a second scales the wall and lights out for the territory. The others are told that she did 'something bad' and they won't be seeing her again. The girls are kitted out with butterfly wings and taken to the stage of a theater that appears to be part of the house. The audience in the shadows seems to be solely male and the housekeeper figure tells the girls that these 'shows' help pay the freight. It's perhaps important to emphasise that there is absolutely nothing about the dancing that could be described as even suggestive let alone salacious or pornographic, which means that it's all in the minds of the male audience. There's also a mysterious woman who appears once a year to 'choose' a girl who will be allowed to leave with her. Eventually the two choreographers lead the girls through the theater and down into an endless underground tunnel which terminates in a railway platform where a train is waiting. They take their seats and the train delivers them to a sunlit plaza up to its ass in fountains. The girls frolic in the fountains. One of the girls sees a golden lad probably around 20 through the fountain. He gives her a dazzling smile. And that's it. Back to the opening shot - whatever that was. And there you have it. Stunning! Breathtaking! Pretentious crap.

Take your choice. I know what I think.

Dreamy Allegory

[rmax304823 · 7/10 · 12 December 2009]

This is a bewitchingly rendered but somewhat demanding inquiry into the nature of growing up. The director -- whose name is so long and complicated that it exceeds even the length and complexity of this periphrastic disavowal to use it -- takes us through a mysterious school for young girls.

We see the course of the girls' maturation through the eyes of three of them. First, six-year-old Iris, who arrives in a coffin wearing only her underpants. (Sic.) Then mid-level student Alice, who is given to minor acts of rebellion because she wants to see what the outside world looks like. Then the more mature Bianca, who we see guided through the ceremony of graduation and ultimate release.

And what a school it is! Each of the couple of dozen girls gets a hair ribbon denoting her class level -- red for the tyro Iris, blue for the more experienced Alice, violet for the about-to-bloom Bianca.

But what kind of school is it? There are perhaps two or three grown-up instructors who treat the girls not unkindly but don't tell them much about the curriculum or its purpose. The lessons seem to consist mostly of biology, focusing on the phylogeny and maturation of women -- and many many ballet lessons.

The main building and the five dormitories are secluded in a dark forest that seems filled with butterflies during the warm months. Those butterflies are all over the place. One of the instructors delicately gathers and pins dead specimens in her collection. The girls emerge temporarily from their chrysalis stage to perform a dance for mysterious guests while dressed as butterflies. The guests sitting in the darkened auditorium, applauding and whistling as the clumsy kids twirl about and fall down, all chip in to support the school, as it turns out. I presume the profusion of butterflies has something to do with the stages of human development, though I know not exactly what.

Water is another recurring theme. We see it repeatedly in all its varied forms -- great gushing fountains, spattering rain drops, lakes for the girls to splash around in, lakes for the girls to drown in while trying to escape, bath tubs for girls to stand in and examine their own budding physicality. Does the gurgling water "stand for" something? I don't know. It's constantly shifting its form, so I suppose it's vaguely related to the changes the girls are undergoing.

There's an air of menace about the whole production, especially in the sound and in the scenes in the dark forest, from the very beginning, when Iris arrives in the coffin, until the end, when Bianca is led away with the other graduates and taken to an ominously rumbling trolley in an underground tunnel, to be removed, without explanation, to some strange distant place.

Now, that place MIGHT be the harem of some Arab sheik who has a thing for hordes of young girls feeding him dates -- but that would be an American movie. That's not the ending here, in this French movie. I won't spell out the ending because, well, for one thing, I don't get it.

It's as if the brothers Grimm had come across a fairy tale that had no particular point, that was reportage rather than editorial in nature. There's a lot of ambiguity in the film because there is, after all, a lot of ambiguity experienced in the course of growing up. The director with the too-long name has lovingly painted these experiences on the movie screen.

But be aware that this is rather a longish and definitely slow slog through childhood and doesn't exactly explode with dramatic scenes. No, Van Damm doesn't get to wrench somebody's head off and stuff giblets into the neck cavity. There are instead languorous scenes of girls sitting around or playing on swings. And once in a while one girl says something to another. And later, the other girl may answer, or she may not.

Not to put this movie down but Peter Weir does this kind of thing better in movies like "Picnic at Hanging Rock."

A film with lot of interpretations and not many answers.

[oktjabr · 7/10 · 18 September 2005]

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.

A wonderful, unexpected surprise

[slowdriver · 9/10 · 8 March 2006]

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.

Interesting, if you catch it in a certain mood

[Andy-296 · 6/10 · 30 January 2007]

I admit that the first time I saw this movie, I turned the DVD off after about 20 minutes. I felt the movie was just too boring. Then a few months later, a female friend insisted to me that this was a terrific movie, that I should give it another try. So I saw it again. And I have to agree that it improved on second viewing (unfortunately, a sad fact of movie viewing is that how much you like a particular movie depends on a certain degree on how was your mood that particular day). The movie is set in a mysterious boarding school for little girls, that is surrounded by a sort of enclosed forest, and where the girls don't seem to be taught anything else but ballet. Once a year, a couple of the girls are selected by the school's imperious director, and are taken off the school. To where, the girls are not told. The director (the real life companion of infant terrible Gaspar Noe) chooses an ambiguous and indirect form of storytelling. The movie suggests a lot, but delivers a little less than it promises. It is an art movie, but with a lot of the mannerisms of the terror genre. And the ending I found a little disappointing. But if you are armed with a little patience, this might be a worthwhile experience.

Narrow-minded views?

[beki460 · 9/10 · 30 December 2011]

I really enjoyed this film, many reviews consider it 'paedophilic' however I can honestly say this thought never entered my head. The children may be half-naked and Bianca may do a brief nude scene, this scene is only for the benefit of Hadzihalilovic's portrayal of the young becoming sexually mature, which is a natural cycle. Bianca has hit the age where she is becoming curious, she is trapped away in an all girls boarding school having had little experience with the opposite sex. Thus the scene where masturbation is implied, Hadzihalilovic is showing the unnatural way of this boarding school (although it is, ironically, surrounded by nature) and how these girls have been too sheltered. When the eldest students dance on the stage, clearly the dance is showing the blossoming into womanhood, but also they need to raise money for food and living expenses alike! How else would they live?! During the dance Bianca is noticed by the opposite sex, awakening her curiosity (the young innocence goes with age). Anyway blah blah, I just think if people looked a bit deeper into the layers of connotations that have been crafted in they wouldn't find the the film quite the same. It is, after all, a work of art.

INNOCENCE (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, 2004) **1/2

[Bunuel1976 · 6/10 · 11 September 2006]

I was really looking forward to this one (even if I hadn't heard of it before a friend of mine mentioned it to me) especially given its affinity (according to the sleeve, at least) to Surrealism and Luis Bunuel in particular. However, while visually the film was undeniably arresting at times, the storyline - if so it can be called - is ultimately pointless with the film needlessly stretched out to nearly 2 hours. The school setting and the girl's coming-of-age suggested something akin to ZERO DE CONDUITE (1933) and VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS (1970) but, as it turned out, it was far less satisfying than either of these truly surrealist masterworks. For one thing, the enigmatic narrative often takes turns to focus on one particular girl's plight at a time and, even if the little girl who rises out of the sea in a coffin at the beginning, is the ostensible protagonist, by the film's end another girl has taken center stage! I guess it is still a notable feature-film debut - especially coming from a female director - but, overall, it is so languidly paced as to invite drowsiness even in the most attentive of viewers!

Eviter a tout prix!

[paul_imseih · 1/10 · 25 June 2005]

One of the above reviewers associated this film with the works of Tarkovsky in the use of imagery. What an outrageous slur against one of the great directors of film.

To give you some idea of what a w--k-fest this film is, the entire credits are shown at the beginning of the film. Most in the audience found this hilarious but only later did I realise why this is done - so we don't find the credits more entertaining than the film. Yet today, 2 days after watching the film, this fact - the credits at the start of the film - were the true highlight of the movie. What innovation! What genius!

Despite the long, drawn out feel of the film, it is neither poetic, dreamlike nor moving. Directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic (one of Gaspar Noe's gang - he of "Irreversible" and "Seul Contre Tous"), the film aims for strangeness and profundity but veers off course pretty quickly. It isn't even kooky, funny, insightful, shocking or (if you'll excuse my language) entertaining...

And it certainly is not art. So what the hell was I watching??

Noe can get away with irreverent, eccentric or questionable imagery because there is real muscle on the bones of his films. This film is a flabby imitation, with only the trickery left to prop it up.

Don't get me wrong, I love French cinema. My wife is French, I love France, the language, the culture, French literature and history. But this film gives French cinema a bad name.

To the clown who ran the Sydney Film Festival in 2005 (Lynden Barber) - you picked an embarrassingly bad collection of films. To have this as one of the closing films of the festival highlighted what rubbish you served up.

The Film That Has It All

[keren_boy_ii · 10/10 · 28 September 2017]

I personally describe Innocence as the movie that has it all. It has joyfulness, sadness, drama, thriller, anger, beauty, peacefulness, and mystery. You can feel the joyfulness by the way the children plays around. There is definitely sadness and anger when the children were trying to figure out what is outside and how to get there. Then the thrilling part is when Iris started to get curious about where Bianca is heading every night. The drama is clearly visible in the way the two teacher reacts to each other, you can feel that there is some sort of special relationship/feeling between them. However, you clearly see the beauty of nature being shown in such a nice greenish ambiance and the peacefulness in the form of very minimal use of music.

As far as I know, there have been no other movie that has it all like this. I know that The Fine Art of Love did not by any mean try to go this way. I believe that they were going more into the darker side of the story, and by going that way it means that it does not have the same excitement as Innocence.

Also I happen to have seen a couple of Japanese movies (not a lot) which somehow I personally believe were very unusual in terms of the story and visualization. Yet unfortunately none of them were in any way as interesting as Innocence. Thus I can confidently say that at least for myself I have never seen any movie as complete as Innocence.

In addition to all that, I also like the fact that they do not use professional child actresses. To me it really brings out the innocent feeling. Every move and dialogues they make just seems so natural.

This movie is definitely something I would recommend anyone to see it at least once in their lifetime. I really mean anyone from any religious belief, nationality, race, and gender. It is good for broadening our mind on how a good movie can be made.

Definitely a 10 out of 10 score.

good work but the end is really pathetic

[moonika · 7/10 · 7 December 2006]

If the movie would end before it really did, it is quite a perfect piece of work. The music was perfect match with the scenes, script was well done, I really appreciate the camera work and the costumes and how it was all arranged in that hypnotic atmosphere. But they should leave it without the explanation, leave the girls in the train, going somewhere with the teachers and cut the movie. I really didn't like how it ends. But I really liked watching the movie, maybe it is better to go out of cinema about 2 minutes before it ends. And that is all I want to say about the film. But they still push me into writing more because of ten lines rule, so for now bye-bye.

Reality symbolises reality

[cliffhanley_ · 5/10 · 9 January 2006]

Willem de Kooning, one of the leading lights of the loose crowd who were bunched together as Abstract Expressionists, confounded the critics by making paintings that were recognisably women, although his way of working made Jackson Pollock look like a model of delicate reticence in contrast. Was it abstract or figurative? The correct answer is: Who cares? 'Innocence' also treads its own path without acknowledging categories. It's about a girls' boarding school, but more Angela Carter than Frank Richards. It's an excellent idea to get all the credits out of the way before the story begins, so that the final scene has all the power a final scene aught to have; the last chord, the last word. It opens with perhaps a universal wet dream sequence, followed by what appears to be a close-up of the Great Sperm Race. A sharp cut to the crisp roar of a little waterfall, then to the arrival of Iris (Auclair) surrounded by the girls of the school. It's never made clear what kind of school this is; it could almost be a metaphorical afterlife. The grownups look like it's any time between 1960 and now, but this is ambiguous, and it feels like the eighteenth century much of the time. And although the film is disingenuously literal throughout, plenty of the 'literal' happenings turn out to be heavily allegorical. The long, slow, takes add to the impression that everything may have a hidden meaning; and the mystery surrounding this institution, the girls' provenance and fate plus the insistent signs of wholesome purity, from the white uniforms to the furry animals, lead to a sense of quiet foreboding. A few incidents are baldly described as matter-of-fact but then take on symbolist colours, and also some apparently deep and resonant actions appear in the end to be more quotidian than Bunuelesque. But these girls are going through sexual awakening in an enclosed place and time, and the compression makes for a meditation on this, its universality and the 'school's analogous relationship to bone marrow, the source of our lifeblood. A typical mix of elements might include the oldest girl, her tousle-haired fate and an unashamedly erectile fountain. So it goes. Es la vida.