A film whose main characters are pre-pubescent girls in gymslips made by the collaborator and partner of Irreversible director Gasper Noé strikes dread in anyone familiar with his work, but Lucile Hadzihalilovic’s first film implies malevolence that never materialises.

Delivered to an all girls’ school in a coffin, six-year-old Iris (Zoé Auclair) is quickly taken under the older Bianca’s (Bérangère Haubruge) wing, but when Iris asks if she will be able to see her brother she’s told that visiting or leaving the school is forbidden.

The majority of the girls are accepting of their confinement within the school and its grounds and they aren’t mistreated in any way. But an attempt to row to freedom by one of pupil ends in her death when the boat sinks. Her body is burnt on a funeral pyre with no family or friends present.

A mixture of fantasy and realism make parts of Innocence read like a Turner Prize installation and Hadzihalilovic focuses on the surrounding woodland, it’s wildlife and the innocence of children at play. It’s beautifully photographed with a low rumbling score that heightens the sinister undertone.

“Obedience is the only path to happiness”, the girls are instructed by one of the only two teachers we see. The headmistress visits once a year to choose a girl for ballet school and when Alice (Lea Bridarolli) isn’t picked because her neck isn’t long enough she’s so distraught she climbs over the school wall and escapes into the woods. The girls are told she must never be spoken of again.

Hadzihalilovic’s camera spends a disproportionate amount of time languishing on the girls’ bare legs, and, clad in knee length socks, short pleated skirts and white vests it’s hard to view the film without wondering what a paedophile might make of it.

If Hadzihalilovic’s aim is to revert to a time when children could be looked at without being sexualised then she’s disingenuous at best and irresponsible at worst. When accused of pandering to paedophile fantasy she defends herself by saying that any suggestion of impropriety comes from what we bring with us to the cinema, not from her film. This may be true, but if the audience is unable to wipe away the conditioning of our times then presumably so was she when she made it.

Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers is a strong source of inspiration, but Innocence is actually based on a short story by Frank Wedekind. At a question and answer session with the director after the press screening I attended, Hadzihalilovic recalled the anger she felt when Wedekind gave no explanation for the more mysterious events in his book. Adopting his artistic philosophy she said Innocence was a film that needs to be “felt” rather than analysed - she therefore joins a long line of French filmmakers, Noé included, whose equivocal approach to their art is intent on whipping up controversy with little defence.

Primarily a study piece that will find a strong place on film theory courses, Innocence is indulgent, and frustrating, but inspired nonetheless.

Innocence is released in the UK on 30 September 2005

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