Innocence (2004)

 

Director: Lucile Hadžihalilović

Screenplay: Lucile Hadžihalilović

Based on a novella by Frank Wedekind

Cast: Zoé Auclair as Iris; Lea Bridarolli as Alice; Bérangère Haubruge as Bianca; Marion Cotillard as Mademoiselle Eva; Hélène de Fougerolles as Mademoiselle Edith; Olga Peytavi-Müller as Laura; Alisson Lalieux a Selma; Ana Palomo-Diaz as Nadja

An Abstract Candidate

 

Innocence begins with a casket...in which a young girl named Iris (Zoé Auclair) is brought to a school cut off from the world and entirely for the education of young girls. Iris is our introduction to this world of changing coloured hair ribbons, violet for the eldest girls and red for the youngest, and where they are designated into houses with five each maximum, with curfews that are enforced at night. Thus begins the debut theatrical film for Lucile Hadžihalilović, a figure whose actual filmography so far has been tiny but has made an impact. Her work with her husband, as a regular collaborator to the controversial filmmaker Gasper Noe, should be taken in mind too, as she has worked as producer and editor for his productions from the nineties as well, but her own filmography is just as distinct if with only four works so far from the nineties into the 2020s. La Bouche de Jean-Pierre (1996), probably the most difficult one to access. At fifty plus minutes a micro-feature, it is the most grounded and the most difficult as it tackles the subject of sexual abuse of a young girl, but her work in full theatrical length from the 2000s onwards, more readily available, are insanely idiosyncratic productions.

And all of them involve children as central figures in them as well. Earwig (2021), adapted from a Brian Catling novel, is the ritual of one man to tend to a girl who has teeth made of ice, a ritual we barely get a great deal of, and whilst it is arguably the most conventional of the trio, it is still an idiosyncratic work to absorb. Evolution (2015), an original tale, covers one boy in a matriarchal community which is linked to the sea and aquatic entities, and then there is Innocence itself, which is as elusive as it is blatant in its own truly unique mood, a metaphor for reaching adolescence as a young girl if full of additional aspects to unpick. It is exceptionally obvious, even in layers, what its metaphors are about, and the film is explicit about this at times, but the tone is still eerie from the get-go as we go through an entire year or so of this mysterious school. This boarding school for girls, where their parents cannot communicate with them and they graduate once they reach the violet ribbon age, is ritualistic including rumours of the cruel punishments that can be dished out if you do not follow the rules. This includes having to serve the girls over years until you are an old woman, something which likely links to Mademoiselle Edith (Hélène de Fougerolles), the teacher we see, and Mademoiselle Eva (an early Marion Cotillard role) their ballet teacher, friends beyond their roles and in Eva's case, especially, with emotional burden from having been part of this contrasted world that educates these girls into puberty. The macabre nature of this school is through this, and other rituals such as how each New Year, the school's head comes and takes one of the blue ribbon girls away as a "chosen" one, or that when one girl dies attempting to leave, she is deliberately forgotten as if she had committed the worst taboo possible.

Contrasting this is the magical air of the film's world, prominently using nature itself for the metaphors and visual splendour onscreen - snails, cocoons (a metaphor here treated), the entire seasonal changes from snow to flowers in full bloom, even frogs half dead or sleeping in icy lakes among visuals seen. The production likely took time and patience as this goes over seasons in the narrative, from winter to spring purposely. There is, due to the subject at hand, aspects which will make some viewers uncomfortable as this is a frank film about this idea of adolescence without ever becoming lurid, close to an actual fairy tale in tone. From a female filmmaker, there is no sense of this being voyeuristic, and the discomfort some viewers may feel may be entirely the few moments we see these young girls bathing in a lake which could be considered taboo for many simply for depicting nudity even if entirely without sexual gaze whatsoever. Considering what the film is about, that the film is about young children being taught until they are teen girls, when they leave the school in the finale, the discomfort some viewers may feel does come into how the film, with "innocence" as its title, does challenge that term in its own may, both whimsically and in nodding to the sinister machinations of the school itself.

What the girls are taught, including the biology lessons about evolution, are contrasted by the stereotypical subjects they are learning, ballet especially, which are considered "feminine" subjects to study from a child's age. Menstruation is explicitly talked of, as one girl learns what to do from one of the teachers about this, and the discomfort in certain scenes for a viewer likely comes from how we have made this uncomfortable, both because of unfortunately how we have brought a corrupting gaze on childhood and yet also how we do not like to talk about how children do not vanish and merely return as adults, but at a time from around ten to twenty slowly changed through adolescence from children we view as innocents to adults. The film also has threads which suggest things which are gross in the school's structure too; ballet performances the older girls have to perform, which pay for the upkeep of the school, involve having older adult viewers fawn over them in the seat and even throwing flowers to those who are the most beautiful to them, explicitly nodding to how adults can corrupt innocence as much as we feel uncomfortable imagine children not as metaphors of innocence in real life.

The production, in contrast to the later films which are steeped in their settings' mood, feels tranquil even when it will nod to this disturbing aspects, from these performances to the use of coffins to bring the students into the school, and the lack of a traditional narrative as this splits its emphasis on different characters prevents the material from merely being a demonstration of metaphors being spoon fed to the viewer. It takes patience as a result, as this work despite being structured around a very accessible narrative drive, over all the seasons through an entire school year, leaves many aspects of its logic unexplained. This school, lost in unknown woodland cut off from the world, is still fantastical even if the environment is vividly real woodland, and whilst we learnt gossip and truths about how the school works, it is still so vague that the metaphorical interpretation, that this is all a metaphor for growing from childhood to puberty, is completely justifiable. The film, unlike the other films, does without a lot of genre tropes particularly in horror (Evolution) or actual gore (Earwig), fairy tale apt if itself a term which can be questionable in whether it really explains the tone for Innocence.

Certainly it is a film which could have failed completely, the confidence alone to make a film where baring two adult actress it is entirely on the shoulders of its cast of young girls, and cinematographer Benoît Debie to help bring the world alive alongside the production team, brave for Lucile Hadžihalilović. Alongside short film work, arguably, La Bouche de Jean-Pierre was her debut, and that was tonally just as brave for its bleakness without a realistic tone and setting, but as a film which caught notice, Innocence fully succeeds in its tone, its ideas and even in not presenting all the answers explicitly. All that I the reviewer have suggested as the meanings may not be enough or right, and this is factoring in its source material Mine-Haha, or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls by Frank Wedekind, which could change the entire tone as much as what was interpreted for this filmic reinterpretation. (And considering Wedekind wrote the "Lulu" cycle, including Pandora's Box which was made into the legendary Louise Brook film of the same name from 1929, his source book adds an entire viewpoint of this film if viewers are knowledgeable of both). Personally, as well, finally reaching a major part of Lucile Hadžihalilović's filmography, its reputation was also deserved, and among the films which came after, that term "idiosyncratic" is truly apt for this. Not even in terms of it being avant-garde or extreme in how its presentation is, as this has a glacial and quietly atmospheric mood, but in how it finds a simplistic in telling a tale which is both clear to understand themes from, but also elusive altogether, it would happily grow and gain more weight per the many times it was seen, and especially by who the viewer is and what they bring to it emotionally. That it in itself a rare virtue this managed to achieve among its many others.

Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric/Eerie

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium