INNOCENCE
Directed & Written by: Lucile Hadzihalilovic, based on a novella
Mine-Haha, or the Corporeal Education of Young Girls by Franz Wedekind.
Produced by: Patrick Sobelman.
Director of Photography: Benoît Debie.
Edited by: Adam Finch.
Music by: Richard Cooke.
Released by: Leisure Time/Home Vision Entertainment.
Language: French with English subtitles.
Country of Origin: Belgium/France/UK. 117 min. Not Rated.
With: Marion Cotillard, Hélène de Fougerolles, Zoé Auclair, Bérangère Haubruge & Lea Bridarolli.

When the coffin opens, six-year-old Iris (Zoé Auclair), lying inside, blinks her eyes and, looking at the girls surrounding her, asks for her brother. She is told she cannot see him here and little else. Iris is the youngest of three lead characters, prepubescent girls who question their strange and unexplained encampment, nestled in a dense forest illuminated by glowing chandeliers. The girls arrive there at age six and will leave at age 12, knowing little more of their exit than their entrance. Wearing age-color-coded ribbons in their hair, they are groomed by maternal figures (servants, indentured teachers, and a headmistress, all subordinate to a series of indistinct male figures) to dance and to learn about nature. However, it's the girls who teach each other how to survive in their elfin world. The governing rules and punishments are all obediently enforced by themselves. After all, they're taught, "Obedience is the only path to happiness." If a girl attempts to escape and is caught, she will suffer a lifetime of servitude, or so the rumors go.

Two hours of dense symbolism alternate, at times, as engrossing, obvious, and irritating. The movie's problem is its largest asset: the nonstop anxiety that neither the audience nor the girls know where they are, why they're there, who's in control, or what will happen to them. What drives the viewer's involvement is the phantasmagoric plot, not the allegory. But director Lucille Hadzihalilovic gives the plot no substantial resolution. The emphasis is clearly on the symbolic.

This can make for wonderful cinema, were it not for two hours of very fascinating questions that yield no firm answers. Innocence is almost like a Guy Maddin film made subtle combined with a David Lynch dream-like atmosphere, which can be very seductive to certain audiences. Conception aside, the production shines with fantastic acting from a cast of almost entirely inexperienced young actors and a set from Arnaud de Moleron that embodies a child-like vision of reality. Filmed in rich colors, it's beautiful to watch and think about, but the film struggles to balance traditional narrative devices with very literary notions of content and purpose. Zachary Jones
October 21, 2005