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MovieMail's Review
It's hard to think of a more exciting and audacious cinematic debut in recent memory; Lucile Hadzihalilovic has created a film like no other.
Loosely based on an obscure Frank Wedekind novella, Innocence evokes a unique aura and casts a hypnotic spell. It begins with a lengthy, disquieting credits sequence that exerts a malevolent energy, followed by a murky image whose significance only becomes clear at the end. We then cut to a beautifully-filmed forest, where a coffin is brought into a room full of young girls. The coffin is opened, and the girl inside wakes and sits up.
This mysterious opening is never explained. Indeed, the audience must interpret what they can from the strange story that follows. We learn the girls are at some sort of school in a thick forest and are forbidden to leave the woods until they reach puberty. The girls are taught dancing, and yearn to impress the headmistress who will select a favourite to be taken away from the school (we never find out where). Rivalries are bitter, and many of the girls spitefully taunt each other, whilst others yearn to escape.
Although she has worked with Irreversible director Gasper Noé, Hadzihalilovic's extraordinary film exudes a far subtler tone of menace. Although nothing explicitly horrible happens, many scenes recall a dark fairy tale (one girl tries to escape down the river and disappears forever). The film features clearly metaphorical images (an unscaleable wall, a theatre stage, a sewer), yet the film is scattered with intriguing ambiguities. Innocence is an endlessly fascinating work of art, which will provoke and astonish anyone who sees it.
A surreal dream of a film set in a girl's boarding school deep in a forest, where a new pupil is delivered in a coffin-like box. Teasing the audience with a sense of mystery and menace - where do the older girls go at night? - this is a remarkable debut feature that confounds expectation.
