Rent Innocence (2004)

Interesting but obscure ... - Innocence review by NP

I enjoy obscure stories and have no problem with open-ended narratives. To spend nearly two hours in the company of such a charming cast of characters however, I would have liked to have some kind of payoff or even a partial explanation as to what it is I’ve just spent 112 minutes watching.

This is some kind of coming-of-age fantasy set in a world within a world removed from reality but filmed in huge and beautiful locations. The characters are predominately female (“There are no boys here,” someone points out to newcomer Iris - Zoé Auclair – at one stage). Set in an isolated girl’s school, newcomers arrive in coffins, to emerge blurry-eyed and are warmly greeted by their new associates.

One of the very few male characters, who is nameless and faceless, is a male voice from the audience at one of the girls’ dancing performances, who throws down a rose to Bianca (Bérangère Haubruge) as a reward for being ‘the prettiest.’

I felt a bit uncomfortable watching certain scenes which seemed to exploit the burgeoning sexuality of the young girls – perhaps that was the point. Certainly, toward the end, young Bianca seems happy with the attentions of the first male she meets – but so much is conveyed without words (and so much is deliberately not conveyed) that it’s difficult to imagine what it all means. The best way to enjoy this is to simply go with it, to enjoy the fairly-tale idyll in which much of the running time is spent and absorb the scary and uncertain notion the pupils must face when leaving. My score would be 6 out of 10.