FemaleFirst.co.uk: DVD: Innocence [2005] [DVD]

Innocence [2005] [DVD]
enlarge	Director: Lucile Hadzihalilovic Actors: Marion Cotillard, Helene De Fougerolles, Zoe Auclair, Lea Bridarolli, Berangere Haubruge Studio: Artificial Eye Category: DVD List Price: ~~£19.99~~ Buy New: £4.48 as of 24/11/2009 13:34 GMT details You Save: £15.51 (78%) New (18) Used (2) from £4.48 Seller: Amazon.co.uk Rating: 19 reviews Sales Rank: 10784 Format: PAL Languages: English (Unknown), French (Unknown), English (Subtitled), French (Original Language) Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over Region: 0 Number Of Discs: 1 Running Time: 115 Minutes Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2 Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.6 UPC: 502186630830 EAN: 5021866308302 ASIN: B000BX6FW8 Theatrical Release Date: 2004 Release Date: January 23, 2006 Shipping: Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours


Similar Items: Angela [DVD] Noce Blanche [DVD] [1991] Atomised [2006] The Age of Innocence Girls Can't Swim [2003] [DVD]


Customer Reviews: Showing reviews 1-5 of 19 1 2 3 4 Next » A New Cycle May 30, 2006 duirsgrove 16 out of 19 found this review helpful This is really such an allegorical film you could spend a long time analysing it as it's not by any means an easy background film. This is a deep, dark, disturbing, foreboding film with many uncomfortable scenes and implications. Yet it's also gently dreamy and poetic, beautiful, idyllic, progressive and optomistic mystery. Far from tedious or shallow it's meticlous and admirable on many levels. The point of life is the journey after all, not the ending! br / br /The young cast are amazing in their roles, completely natural; it just gives you enough to then do the job of scaring yourself. Themes of nature and human beauty translate well to screen despite being over 100 years old in book form. It's a mystery/thriller and as such with location, colours, careful camera angles and unsettling themes is rather disturbing but not inappropriate within context - in some ways it draws many parallels with cultural ideals that remain today. It examines almost scientifically yet compells the viewer to react somewhat emotively both the natural and the cultural, behaviour patterns and social control and through that question ideas, choices and life itself. br / br /Cycles, nature symbolism, religion, rules and hierachy feature through the case studies of three varying aged girls. It's an eerie, secret society atmosphere with visual parallels displayed in fantastic award winning camera work and limited, precise dialogue - a falsely created world within a world of deliberate lightness and dark, good and bad, individual and group, child and adult, animal and human. Both characters and setting are isolated by physical and psychological barriers. Female development is responsibly explored as integral to the story, not to be misconstrued as an attempt at cheap perversion. Utopia is assessed are the negatives of jealousy, competition, violence, withdrawl, bitterness and bullying - things some people may not enjoy viewing. This film attempts to demonstrate the nature/human parallels of birth, tumultuous development and maturation via the nurturing if restrictive school in a responsible, appropriate and natural way. We also have to adjust ourselves to the other worldly regime and perhaps non-conformity of this fictional, artificial life presented as their immediate limited reality. This is by a female writer/director whose partner did the more direct and better received "Irreversible." br / Innocence March 1, 2006 Demob Happy (London / Grenoble) 12 out of 15 found this review helpful Innocence is a mysterious piece of of largely visual filmmaking with an impressive, mostly child cast. It is clearly intended as an allegory or parable about the end of childhood and the awakenings of adolescence, and is not meant to be treated too literally (clearly some people are puzzled by this, see below!). Thankfully, the metaphorical level is not force-fed to the viewer as a pretentious and knowingly clever layer of meaning, but rather an implication in a film of great beauty and suspense. Children arrive in a coffin at a boarding school deep in a forest. They explore the haunted landscape of the school grounds which they are not permitted to leave, some pondering escape. The film is shot in the unsettling - sometimes seemingly voyeuristic - Surrealist style of Bunuel, but with echoes of David Lynch#x27;s Eraserhead. Mostly free of dialogue, it finds expression in the painterly qualities of its imagery and the spooky hum of its enchanted interior spaces. Tapping into Childhood fears and nightmares, its is the kind of film you would love to tune into in the middle of the night and be completely freaked-out by. The film does not seek to explain its mysteries, nor should it. The suspense and style is engaging on its own right, evolving into a startling and thought-provoking final sequence. Beware the 'similar items'! April 30, 2008 Toby (Cardiff) 2 out of 2 found this review helpful Innocence is nothing like the other DVDs you might see in the 'similar items' category. If you're looking for something which blends eroticism with art then this is not the film for you. br / br /If, however, you are looking for a refreshing exploration of childhood then Innocence is the film for you. There are sinister sexual overtones but they are presented as exactly that. This is a film about the beauty of childhood. Hadlizahilovic challenges the viewer's preconceptions by suggesting and then withdrawing from the notions of sex and paedophilia. The DVD cover is incredibly suggestive but this film is consciously NOT about sex, a fact which leaves the viewer with a refreshingly innocent image of what childhood should be. Haunting, marvellous, naturalistic, unique... September 23, 2008 Chintan Nanavati (Staffs, United Kingdom) This is unlike most films you'll ever see. (Although it has some faint thematic echoes of Shyamalan's The Village.)It's compelling viewing from start to finish and the cinematography is incredibly sensual. I suppose the film opens itself up to accusations of having quasi-paedophilic tendencies. But, to be fair, I don't believe that to be the film-makers' intention. And even the most innocent representations of children on film have the potential to elicit inappropriate responses in the eyes of some beholders! br /Innocence is a delight in so many ways. Its immersion in the lives of these young girls is wholly credible, fascinating and a true cinematic tour-de-force. Magical, mysterious and sinister... May 7, 2007 S. Witkowski-Baker (London, England) 37 out of 38 found this review helpful I had never heard of this film before i picked it off the shelf, so I had no idea what to expect. br / br /It's based on 'Mine-Haha, or the Physical Education of Young Girls', by a German playwright named Frank Wedekind. The plot revolves around a boarding school for girls roughly aged 5 or 6 up until they hit puberty, in the middle of a dense forest. br / br /As soon as the film starts, it fills the viewer with a sense of foreboding, with a long, flickery opening featuring a child-sized coffin and no music, but a deep, ominous rumbling sound instead. That combined with the next scene, of girls in identical white uniforms opening the coffin to reveal thier new, living, companion, certainly made me expect some kind of sinister nightmare. I, like many other viewers, was concerned that it would turn out to be a film about paedophillia, and I was waiting with bated breath for some true horror to come around the corner. br / br /But actually, there are no monsters or paedophiles, but rather a distinct lack of sexual innuendos. The film really is about innocence. The celebration of young girls in the film would only a few decades ago have seemed totally unremarkable, before such images were so sexualised as they sometimes are nowadays. The subject of developing female sexuality is indeed touched on, especially towards the end, but not in nearly as sinister a manner as one might expect. br / br /The school takes on a life of its own. On the one hand its a child's paradise, where the girls can play and practice dance and gymnastics among the trees and swim in the lake, in between exciting lessons. But it also feels like a prison. It is inescapable, and those who try to escape meet a tragic fate or are never spoken of again. There are many dark elements, including mysterious underground tunnels, and strange sounds which come from beneath the lake. The headmistress takes one blue-ribboned girl a year away from the school, based more on neck length and beauty than dance talent or intelligence. br / br /The imagery is magical and very original, from the lamp-lit trees at night to the ominous red curtain. The cinematography is breathtaking, and gives the film a dreamlike fantasy missing from other films of a similar genre. br / br /Innocence is essentially a film about the magic of young girls and thier own utopian world. It touches on thier emotional and sexual development and the authoritarian structure of the school system, with a sense of anticipation and unease pervading the whole film, reflecting the emotions of a young girl going into puberty, with a suprisingly optimistic ending. br / br /I, for one, absoloutely loved it. Showing reviews 1-5 of 19 1 2 3 4 Next »

CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON EU S.à.r.l. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’ AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME.