Cruel lessons in life

There's an ominous rumble over the long, flickering credits before we see a small girl emerging from a wooden coffin, to be greeted by others in white uniforms.

They treat her kindly, dress her and show her around their bizarre world: what looks like a school in an old building, surrounded by lamplit woods and swirling water. There are rules, they explain, and if you don't obey them you will be sent away.

At dancing class, the teacher tells her that not all ugly little caterpillars turn into beautiful butterflies, so she has to work hard. Later, the girl lies in bed wondering where she is and why she is at this comfortable but slightly menacing establishment.

This oddly haunting movie is by Lucile Hadzihalilovic, collaborator with the controversial Gaspar Noe, whose provocative Irreversible was enough to send some fleeing from the cinema in horror. But this is not the same thing at all, though its detractors will accuse it of pandering, deliberately or not, to paedophiles.

It will not be surprising to learn that it is based on a story, The Physical Education of Young Girls, by the German expressionist writer Frank Wedekind, who caused outrage in 1891 with his violent rites-of-passage play, Spring Awakening.

Other than the two teachers who appear, a headmistress occasionally visits and examines the young charges to see which will best turn into butterflies for the school play.

Meanwhile our tiny heroine watches intently as a friend tries to escape in a boat that sinks and she sees a man giving a presumably sick girl an injection, telling her not to resist. Will she ever leave this strange microcosm of the world?

The long takes, sometimes examining the dark corners and sinister passageways of the school, and its quietly threatening atmosphere, suggest an allegory of some sort, perhaps about a world that commands conventional obedience and doesn't easily forgive its rebels. But it is ambiguous enough to set the mind working in several directions.

Hadzihalilovic's command of the medium, though, is what makes her film so impressive, and her ability to marshal her young cast with such confidence. While Innocence isn't for everyone, there is no doubt that this talented director has set a puzzle worth exploring.

Innocence
Cert: 15