Lucile 2004

D'après les archives des tribunaux de l'Inquisition, les itinéraires extraordinaires de milliers d'hommes et de femmes qui ont franchi, aux XVI e et XVII e siècles, la frontière militaire, religieuse, culturelle, qui séparait l'islam de la chrétienté, les " renégats " convertis de gré ou de force. …

A symbolic tale set in the sun-dappled grounds of a mysterious girls' boarding school, Lucile Hadzihalilovic's Innocence is certainly one of the more evocative, confident and also sinister portrayals of female awakening that I've seen. Moths flutter in the glow of unusual lamps that seem to hang, unattached, above well-trodden woodland paths. A forlorn, child-sized coffin stands alone in the dusty surroundings of an empty bedroom. A boat, green with decades of wear, bumps audibly and incessantly against its rickety jetty. This is the world in which these impressionable young girls, categorized by the coloured ribbons they wear, innocently frolic. They gossip, do chores, and play on the vast lawns and in the imposing shadow of a mansion; a shadow that later comes to represent the adulthood towards which they are hurtling, unknowingly, at such a relentless pace.