An Interview with Lucile Hadzihalilovic,
the director of acclaimed film “Innocence” (2004)
By Martyn Conterio | Published on May 1, 2008
Translated by Stephanie Moreto and Martyn Conterio

Martyn Conterio, Scene 360: Do you think your film has connections to the horror genre?

Lucile Hadzihalilovic: Yes, if we consider Little Red Riding Hood a horror tale. There is a frightening ambience and some Gothic motives: the forest, the castle and the underground world. We wait throughout the movie for the “wolf” or “the monster” to come into sight.

How did you choose the project?

I read the short story by Frank Wedekind Mine-Haha, or The Corporeal Education of Girls and I immediately wanted to make it into a movie. It had themes that moved me a lot, and a very strong frame in which I would not know how to invent myself. The short story was at the same time confusing and familiar. The author gives no explanation at the end of the book, leaving the reader free to interpret and to go for a walk in this small world, which is very stimulating. It overturns clichés — blending fantasy and lightness, oppression and suspense. Finally, I loved the extremely visual and sensory approach of Wedekind. Sensual, even.

Do you consider cinema a craft or an art-form?

Both. I don't see incompatibility between the two.

The attention to the “natural environment” recalls cinema of Terrence Malick and Peter Weir. Were either of those directors reference points for “Innocence”?

The only true visual reference which I had for “Innocence” was “Picnic at Hanging Rock”: the girls dressed in white in the natural environment and the pantheist dimension. The fountain at the end of “Innocence” is in a way the equivalent of the mountain in which the young girls of “Picnic at Hanging Rock” undergo a deep sensory and mental experience before disappearing. I also thought of the sequence in the forest in “Badlands”, and the insects in “Les Moissons du Ciel.”

How do you approach directing? Do you have a total vision manifested by the screenplay and a chosen visual style? Or do you allow for improvisation?

The scenario is a frame very limited and supple at the same time. Furthermore, by working with children and animals, it's been required to wait to have to improvise and not only in terms of dialogue. That semi-improvisation allows the film to breathe, to come alive. And from there, touching, editing. At least, I hope for it.

What are your thoughts on sound design in relation to the images on screen? It is strikingly employed in your film.

Of course, sound has as much importance as the image, all the more so because I didn't use music other than natural sounds (which these play a dramatic role). Moreover, it was pleasing to me that there is antagonism between picture and sound: the image is coloured and bright. The sound brings out the frightening elements, which creates suspense — also an interiority in comparison with the distance and perhaps coldness of the fixed frames.

Is this film autobiographical in any way?

Completely. And once again thanks to Wedekind, I could add to these personal themes to make a strong and interesting film.

Water is a re-occurring visual motif throughout the film. What does it symbolise and why did you open and close the film with images of running water?

Water doesn't represent anything particularly, but of all the elements linked to nature it is one of the most cinematographic. It can be in various visual forms: the lake, the waterfall, the rain, the fountain... and there are sonorous aspects too. We can immerse ourselves, consider it, protect ourselves from it... water, under its different states can be sometimes reassuring, sometimes frightening; source of life or death. By appearing from a river at the beginning of the movie, and by entering in the powerful throw of a fountain at the end, it is as if we crossed a barrier, a wall, a mirror... we enter in a new zone, in an another circle. It's almost initiatory.

“Innocence” is wonderfully mysterious and ambiguous. What are your thoughts on audience expectation in regards to your film?

It pleases me very much that there are so many interpretations and different reactions to the film. I'm sometimes very astonished with how some people reacted to it. I tried to keep the film as opened as the short story. Often, the films that stay in our minds are those that do not consist merely of a single explanation. I don't search for the opacity or the mystery itself, rather a multiplicity of sense, as in life.

There is a scene in the film in which Madame Eva tells a child “Obedience is the only path to happiness”. Are there more sinister connotations, and are these kind words of wisdom spoken by the teacher? Are there political dimensions to the movie such as school is a fascist institution?

Any education is, in a way a dressage and thereabouts a fascistic process. In regards to the sentence of Madame Eva, we often say to children that disobedience is the source of their misfortune, which is very similar. We say it for their own good, but especially for the family or the social “good.” It is something violent but which can be said with the greatest tenderness. I found it interesting that it is an unhappy person who says it. Did Miss Eva disobey or did she too obey? Finally, this pleased me very much because it was the biggest force in the short story of Wedekind — it takes place not in a rigid and authoritarian boarding school but in a sort of utopian school where the little girls seem to see only agreeable, fulfilling things. However, there are strict rules and the little girls recall non-stop punishments. We don't know if they exist or not, although this disobedience in the social order has already been internalised by them. Wedekind wrote his short story in a context of educational utopias but also of the rise of totalitarianism. And this seemed to me, to be very modern. This made me think of the educational utopias of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s.

The only subjects taught at the school are biology and ballet. I was struck by the Social-Darwinist aspects of these studies, which add to the mysterious selection process that some of these girls are subjected to. Do you think your film is at all commenting on culture and the ideas of breeding within society, i.e. a class distinction imposed by adults?

Of course. The theory of evolution can apply to the social sphere. And to me, the biology of dance seems to be a perfect metaphor of the way these adults prepare the girls (and not only in the school), but to assure a predetermined function in society. I didn't approach the film with the intention to give a message or a speech. Instead, I tried to create feelings and emotions.

The film navigates through moments of anxiety, fear and bewilderment, as if the children are purely symbolic creations of a childhood experience. How do you view this childhood experience in general?

There is not only confusion and anxiety with these little girls. There are also strong instances of pleasures and heedlessness. When we are children, we're completely powerless and subjected to adults who remain partly mysterious to us. It can be worrying. As well as the fact of growing up and being subject to physical metamorphosis.

What interests me in childhood is that everything is felt with the intensity of a first time experience. And also the aptitude to dream, to make poetic interpretations because we are not formatted to the grown-up world yet.

One of the most sinister aspects of the film is the idea of school punishment for rule-breaking. The punishments alluded seem to imply the forfeit of death.

As this is a tale about children, the punishments (fantasised by the little girls) return in some archaic form: swallowed by the lake, killed by the hunters... death is the most shocking and the most mysterious punishment.

International film posters for the movie, “Innocence” (2004)

The ending of the film is quite striking as the environment changes completely and unexpectedly. Were you attempting to give the movie an anachronistic touch or perhaps a timeless quality?

Absolutely. I wanted to give a timeless aspect to the film with reference to the 1960s, which was the decade of my own childhood. It was rather easy to set for the part of the school. As for the city, we chose decors from the 19th century and 1960/70s, yet impossible to locate precisely.

“Innocence” has received awards at film festivals. How do you treat critical responses? Do you feel they vindicate the work or is it merely a promotion tool to raise awareness for the film?

What justifies a movie? It's the reaction it causes in people who see it, professionals or not – the “echo” it finds in certain people. But it is obvious that the critics and the prizes help a little in the visibility of films.