Innocence, the astounding feature film debut from French
director Lucile Hadzihalilovic, feels as though it should begin as
stories do—with “once upon a time,” like the click of a latch in
the door to the imaginary. Instead, it starts with a menacing
rumble. There’s the rush of a waterfall and then the subterranean roar
of a train, the universal sign for a European boarding school.
But this school, surrounded by woods and a wide brick wall, is
located in a parallel world. A little girl named Iris (Zoé
Auclair) is delivered, in a coffin, to one of five houses. An older
girl unlocks her and she is dressed and given colored velvet ribbons
for her hair. The other girls, who are wearing different colors in
their pigtails, from red for the youngest to violet for the oldest, all
untie their ribbons and trade them up for the next color of the
rainbow. Iris is introduced to the school (ballet classes, rhythmic
gymnastics, natural history) and its baroque customs (every year, the
most appealing of the blue ribbons is selected by the headmistress to
leave the school early). Nothing is explained.
Critics have complained that Hadzihalilovic’s vision of a little
sensualist convent will draw pedophiles like flies, but the film is
clearly told from the point of view of the girls themselves: It’s
suffused with an unmistakable dread. The most alert students
make desperate escape attempts. Others retreat into familiar forms of
little-girl psychological revolt: Selma (Alisson Lalieux) is sullen and
staring, feeding off some unseen internal fury; pudgy Rose (Astrid
Homme) undulates with her hula hoop, her eyes giving away a cunning
awareness of her own budding appeal. Hadzihalilovic anticipates the
pedophilia question in more complex ways as well: Her movie plays up
the creepiness of quasi-legitimate cultural hang-ups, like the
smoothness of little girl legs. (I’m reminded of Lewis Carroll’s
inscription on one of his infamous photographs: “Pretty little
legs/Paddling in the waters/Knees as smooth as eggs/Belonging to my
daughters.”) The source material, a novella by Frank Wedekind, has been
called prescriptive, a protofascist recipe for how girls should
actually be taught. In Hadzihalilovic’s hands, it’s a horror story of
the subtlest kind.
This DVD release includes two stiff but essential interviews with the director and perceptive commentary by 9-year-old Zoé
Auclair, the film’s star. 
New to DVD this week: Ford at Fox: The Collection (20th Century Fox, $299.98, certain films available independently and
in smaller packages) and Lubitsch in Berlin (Kino, $79.95).
