Ray Pride

I cannot tell you what the movie "Innocence" means, and I suppose you wouldn't be able to tell me. But the first feature-length film by Lucile Hadzihalilovic, who has collaborated as editor and muse to her partner Gaspar Noe's films ("I Stand Alone," "Irreversible") is that rare movie which thrills by uncommon obstinacy. Deeply unsettling, based on an 1888 novella by Frank Wedekind ("Pandora's Box"), "Innocence" follows a Moebius strip of rituals performed by the girls (and older, superior women) at a strange school in the middle of a forest, a seeming mix of brothel and convent, with a look visually indebted to Magritte. "As a spectator, I like films that take you into a particular physical world," Hadzihalilovic is quoted in a recent Film Comment appreciation, "by playing on sound and sensorial perception." Her craft is undeniable. Down to the very last image, which suggests a return, riverrun past "Finnegan's Wake," to the first image of the film, "Innocence" resists every sort of archetype you might try to impose upon it. "There are no answers to the questions, there's no moral to the story," the director says.

"Innocence" opens Friday at the Music Box.

(2005-12-13)

Also by Ray Pride

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Harold Ramis' "The Ice Harvest," an exquisitely sleazy twenty-first century proto-noir, is deadpan, implacable, inexorable and downright cruel, a marvel of moviemaking, tautly paced, immaculately crafted
(2005-11-29)

Tip of the Week
Although Miramax sat on this one for almost half a decade, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 horror opus is one of the most dread-steeped, agonizing horrors of the past ten years
(2005-11-29)

Born to Rent
(2005-11-21)

Tip of the Week
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(2005-11-15)

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Splash Panel
(2005-11-08)

Catching a Buzz
(2005-11-08)

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Through the past, darkly
(2005-11-01)

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