Innocence

Innocence (2005) is Lucile Hadžihalilović's hypnotic drama, and it's well worth watching online on iFILM. Behind a tall wall deep in the forest sits a sealed boarding school for girls. New pupils arrive inside coffins — and that's only the first thing that unsettles you.

The girls all wear white dresses and ribbons braided into their hair, the color marking their age: the darker the ribbon, the older the child. Their days fill up with dancing, walks and lessons from Mademoiselle Eva (Marion Cotillard) and a science teacher (Hélène de Fougerolles) who explains how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. After dark the rules shift. No one leaves the grounds, no one asks why, and the purpose of the whole place is never spelled out.

Hadžihalilović built her debut from Frank Wedekind's novella Mine-Haha, telling it with almost no dialogue — running water, rustling leaves and the hum of the woods carry the mood instead. This isn't horror or a mystery in the usual sense; it's a parable about growing up as an eerie, unstoppable ritual. Slow, strange and made for viewers happy to fill in the blanks themselves. Stream Innocence (2005) online on iFILM.