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Innocence (2004)

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From Time Out London

‘Innocence’ is no ordinary boarding school movie. At the remote French institution in the woods which serves as the theatre for this creepy, beautiful and deliciously ambiguous film, little girls arrive (and sometimes leave) in coffins. It’s the arrival in this same sinister (and unexplained) fashion of 6-year-old Iris (Zoé Auclair) that first alerts us to the cycle of arrival, surprise, initiation, friendship, stewardship and departure that defines life in this shadowy, gothic, part-idyllic and part-horrific school – a place of few pupils, even fewer teachers and abundant lessons dedicated to dance. The scene is purely pre-pubescent; girls aged from six to 12 wear little white skirts, carry ribbons in their hair (coloured according to age) and leave the school soon after learning the facts of menstruation. Clocks tick and chime, rain falls, the atmosphere is dark and there’s an impending sense of doom and danger that is always present but never realised. The place remains a mystery from start to finish.The school turns out to be a distraction, a device even; this is no ‘If…’, no study of an institution. Instead, this gathering of impossibly childlike, impossibly angelic children works as a metaphor for childhood and the memory of it, growing up, fleeting comradeship, the onset of puberty and the bliss before sexual awakening. The school acts as a canvas for all these ideas, and its two young, troubled teachers, Eva (Marion Cotillard) and Edith (Hélène de Fougerolles) remind us of what little girls become once puberty and adulthood arrive to disturb their bliss (a bliss which is already seen to be threatened at this school by both nature and man). Ultimately, despite its sinister edge, this is an intelligent lament for youth lost, framed by a distinctive and fairytale vision of utopia. A debut of rare vision.

Author: DC

Time Out London Issue 1832: September 28-October 5 2005

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