| | |  | BELGIUM | Home » » Innocence | | | | | | | Description: | | Gushing water. Subterranean rumbling. Sun-dappled green vistas behind huge stone walls. So begins Innocence, a fascinating fable about a mysterious school for girls, where one arrives by coffin to a self-enclosed, highly regimented universe of botany classes, ballet and playtime. The journey from girl to womanhood and the dangers and perils contained therein has rarely, if ever, been explored in a more creative manner than in this intoxicating feature by acclaimed film director Lucile Hadzihalilovic. | | | Product Details: | | | Actors:
| Zoé Auclair, Bérangère Haubruge, Lea Bridarolli, Marion Cotillard, Hélène de Fougerolles | | Director:
| Lucile Hadzihalilovic | | Format:
| Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC | | Language:
| French | | Number of Discs:
| 1 | | Studio:
| Homevision | | Run Time:
| 122 minutes | | DVD Release Date:
| November 13, 2007 | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 13 reviews |
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30 of 40 found the following review helpful:
 "Innocence": a lyrical, beautiful, and sometimes even clinical exploration of coming of age in girlsJan 16, 2010
By Richard Barnette Bloom
"Dickie"
I happened upon this film on YouTube last week and rented it from Netflix.
This is a film about an exclusive private boarding ballet school in an English speaking country that could nevertheless be, and most likely is, found in many nations of the world, especially the Russian Federation, where people are passionate about ballet as they are nowhere else. The cost of educating and training this small group of girls in the basic academic arts and dance is offset by the revenues of recitals the girls put on periodically at an old opera house nearby. Since the fate of the school is tied completely to the success of the recitals, the shows must please their demanding audiences: the girls must not only dance perfectly but look like angels, maintaining perfect figures dressed in white. They are permitted to roam the extensive grounds of their school so long as they do not leave.
That ballet companies can be unforgiving with the rare people suited to their art and that the perfectionism demanded by many dance teachers has driven many students to depression, anorexia, and suicide are cliches. The girls at this school know they cannot leave, so they do not dwell on the injustices meted out by their teachers, but all but the most beautiful and successful entertain fantasies about leaving that often surface as nightmares. Those who act out these fantasies meet differing outcomes.
Although sequestering girls away from males may be necessary to to enable some of them to dance without embarrassment or fear, it is the rare girl that is willing to forego knowledge for the privilege. When the girls run away, it is with the audience's understanding and approval. The prettiest and most talented, on the other hand, find protection at the school and become the school's leaders, knowing they are too young to handle the many attentions of boys they would be sure to meet "outside". When they finally undergo puberty, these "survivors" are taken to the nearby city and neatly deposited at a city fountain, where their unselfconscious willingness to splash in white dresses up to their underwear inevitably draws the attention of boys nearby, who will now teach them about love at precisely the moment when love is most magical and sublime. The system works, but only for the elite: those patient enough to wait out the long ordeal.
Let's be as clear about the film as the film is trying to be clear about girls: This movie is not pornography by any stretch. There is no nudity or sex whatsoever, and shots of girls dressing for ballet or playing on the lawn lack all manner of prurience. This is a film about what it feels like to be a girl on the cusp of adolescence, before hormones make them "boy crazy". What it feels like, more than anything else, is warm and scared and companionable. There are, in fact, no males on this campus, nor need there be, since the film makes clear that girls of this age do not understand sexual differentiation and, what's more, do not care to.
"Innocence" often drags, much as childhood often drags, but it is a visually beautiful film united by a handful of appropriate motifs, water for libido, snow for chastity and purity, rare color for the few reminders of time and aging the girls live with. A riveting film it is not; a sincere and sometimes clinical exploration of feminine coming of age it most certainly is, with the appeal of music and ballet thrown in.
BTW there is really only one fantastic aspect in the film, but it is easily explained and completely in agreement with the film's theme: the girls leave and arrive in coffins. In light of the above it should be obvious what this conceit means: these girls must be "dead" to the sexuality within them for as long as they remain there; their sexuality is directed not to members of the opposite gender but to their ballet's audience. This sexual numbness may be especially common to children raised only among members of their own sex. In its celebration of the grace and beauty of youth, "Innocence" calls for a new era of sublimation of youthful sexual energies, specifically dance, while acknowledging that such sublimation may be impossible and even undesirable for all but the most beautiful and talented of young people among us.
30 of 41 found the following review helpful:
 Great film, bad encoding.Jan 05, 2008
By F. M. Alegre
"spiceee"
Seriously, I don't know what Home Vision did to this film, as it is the dvd image renders it almost unwatchable. There's just too much combing (when a progressive image is made out of an interlaced one and the image gets "videodromey" whenever there's more movement onscreen).
Being a movie about children, every time they would go out to play and dance around the school, there was some crazy "The Ring"-like effect because of the bad encoding, I thought the children where getting out of the TV to kill me, completely took me out of the story.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 pure and beautifulOct 06, 2011
By Angela S.
This is a beautiful film. The storyline is open to your own interpretation. I watched this over a week ago and I cannot stop thinking of different possible answers, yet the storyline isn't that complicated. I loved the actors, for such a young age, they all did an excellent job. This film is set in a park with lots of beautiful green scenery.
There is a suspenseful and dark tone to this film like something awful is going to happen, however, the end result is something that I didn't expect. I loved the eerie feel of the outdoor wall lights attached to the trees along the path that the older girls walked on at night. My favorite scene is when the schoolgirls are dancing, swinging, and playing in the forest with classical music in the background, it really reminded me of my childhood, where you simply enjoyed playing with no drama or tension. If you like slow and thoughtful movies, give it a try.
4 of 5 found the following review helpful:
The forest of broken dreams!Jul 20, 2011
By Hiram Gomez Pardo
The great Robert Bresson always regreted the films had to be accompained by words. He regarded them useless, since the cinema is strictly a visual art.
I bring up this previous comment, because Innocence is a film that easily could do without the words. The visuals talk by themselves, the beauty of nature confronted with the isolation from the outer world around these little girls who are forced to abandon their team once they reach 12, with a violet ribbon on her hair.
Its intimate style prefigures a minimalist portrait about the dreams, hopes and vanished illusions of this bunch of little girls who are brought up without feelings under the most strict rules of obedience and severe discipline.
The final is opened, leaving it to us to judge and meditate. Superb photography despite its slow paced rhtym.
Marion Cotillard once more chews the scenery.
12 of 18 found the following review helpful:
Heart-breakingOct 07, 2009
By PsyRC
There have been a number of interpretations about this film. I guess the important thing is to contribute... Anyway, soon after it was over, I had the same feeling that overtook me during it's entirety, which was uncertainty. It took almost one day for the meaning of it to permeate through my mind and help me discern what was being shown. I truly dismiss any claims pertaining to lewd or inappropriate images... whatever abstract version of reality was being amplified, it drew me in perfectly. It was a very powerful allegory of modern life. Freedom is a myth, that's common-place. However, we continue to live one day after the next as if there weren't strings controlling our movements. We play within our confines. Such is this movie... there are walls, there is a hierarchy, discipline is enforced. They arrive at a young age, albeit in a coffin (already deceased). And they dance... Perfection is not demanded of them, the act is the goal. As the oldest girls move across the stage every night, the shadows of the spectators loom in the background as demons foreseeing perverse omens... Very poignant. I guess people lose their innocence early on in life, more and more prematurely in an exponential fashion, especially in this western hyperactive, hypersexual environment we have created. But I guess the damaged minds of the ones overseeing our children are the true monsters... no matter how secluded and whisked away the upbringing may take place, there is no escape from the wretched mold children are shaped with... they dance, and the genuine innocence in their actions is oblivious to what they are inexorably being groomed to become, even if it is only suggested in the subtext of the film. As we view the chronology of their time in this alternative reality, all becomes clear. However, seeing purity in its quintessential form, and then its slow death at the hands of those who are blind to its light, can become quite unbearable. Anyway, I recommend this film (not that my recommendation means anything), if for no other reason than to show us a mirror of the running-towards-the-mousetrap philosophy reigning over our world, perpetuating our frustrations by psychotic projective identification, murdering off the beauty of future generations as if it would erase our own erroneous undertakings throughout our insipid existence.
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