Innocence
by Lucile Hadzihalilovic
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DVD details
Actor: Bérangère Haubruge, Hélène de Fougerolles, Lea Bridarolli, Marion Cotillard, Zoé AuclairDirector: Lucile Hadzihalilovic
Brand: Image Entertainment
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: French (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 122 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-11-13
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Homevision
DVD Reviews of Innocence
DVD Review: "Innocence": a lyrical, beautiful, and sometimes even clinical exploration of coming of age in girls
Summary: 4 Stars
I came across this film on YouTube one day last week and decided to rent it from Netflix. (Yes, there is an alternative to buying at Amazon when you're not sure you need to own the film.)
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 no where 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 be of very high quality and also please their demanding audiences: the girls must not only dance but look like angels, dressed in white and maintaining perfect figures. They are permitted to roam the extensive grounds of their school so long as they do nothing in order to leave.
It has long been a cliche that ballet companies can be unforgiving with the rare people suited to their art; that the perfectionism demanded by many dance teachers has driven many students to depression, anorexia, and suicide. 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 successful entertain fantasies about leaving often released in nightmares. Those who act out these fantasies meet differing fates.
It may be necessary to sequester girls away from the leers of males to enable them to dance in white without embarrassment or fear, but it is the rare girl who is willing to forgo knowledge for the privilege. When the girls run away, it is with the audience's understanding and approval. The prettiest and most talented of the girls, on the other hand, find protection at the school and develop patience to 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 not unlike the lake at their school, where their unselfconscious willingness to splash in white dresses up to their underwear inevitably draws the attention of age-appropriate boys nearby, who will now teach them about love at precisely their 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 film is not pornography by any stretch of the imagination. There is no nudity or sex whatsoever, and shots of girls dressing for ballet or playing on the lawn in white dresses lack all manner of prurience. And that's precisely what the subject of the film is: this is a film about what it FEELS like to be a girl on the cusp of adolescence, before such prurience comes to the fore and makes them "boy crazy". What it feels like, more than anything else, is warm and scared and companionable, but exclusively with girls. There are, in fact, no men 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 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 coming of age it most certainly is, with the added 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: the girls who land at a school like this are "dead" to the sexuality within them for as long as they remain there; since there is only one gender there, they do not relate to others as sexually alive people on the outside do but only as objects--objects, in this case, meant for exhibition on a ballet stage. That this "deadness" is common to many girls AND boys at this age is obvious, although the earlier ages of puberty experienced around the world means there is less and less of this "deadness" and more overt sexuality--possibly as a result of films like "Innocence".
Description of Innocence
Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 11/13/2007Bestsellers in DVD
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