Running time: 120 minutes
Starring: Marion Cotillard, Helene de Fougerolles
Rating 7 out of 10
This is one of the strangest films not only of this year but also of recent cinematic history. It's based upon a short story by the German playwright Frank Wedekind, who made a name for himself with his subversive highly-sexualised work and is the first feature by the French director Lucile Hadzihalilovic, who in turn is the partner of Gaspar Noé, the director who shook the cinematic world with his compulsive and shocking Irreversible in 2002. The importance of Hadzihalilovic's relationship with Noé is a stylistic one: like Irreversible, Innocence is not told in a conventional start-to-finish manner. It begins with the end titles as a young girl arrives in a coffin in a mysterious boarding school. A gaggle of other girls open her coffin, assign her a special colour and a team to belong to.
From then on we discover the unusual routine of this unusual establishment. The girls are often left to themselves to play games or go swimming and are occasionally visited by strange teachers. Certain girls are given certain privileges, such as being allowed to go to the main house at night and there is also a great deal of anticipation about a proposed project which will take place in the school theatre, and a finale which is as spectacular as it is beguiling.
While it's undoubtedly confusing for a good deal of the film's running time, it's also undeniably beautiful to watch, with glorious cinematography and an excellent cast of young actresses who revel in their roles. Their petty jealousies, squabbles and sense of fun is beautifully captured and expertly handled by the director.
While it's difficult, if not impossible, to say what the film is about, its simplicity and beauty makes it far from pretentious. Indeed for the most part it is compelling.
If the idea of seeing a film unlike anything else on offer this year is your bag, then Innocence is most certainly for you. It marks Hadzihalilovic out as a director to watch, if not necessarily an easy one to spell. Disturbing and highly memorable.
Paul Hurley
