The sight of children playing in a park immediately makes you smile. We watch them frolic, carefree, and now we find ourselves remembering the time when, once upon a time, we did the same. However, for many, this idyllic vision is quickly dissipated as memories of intimidation and violence often suffered without adults’ knowledge come back to their minds. It is this dark part of childhood that the Norwegian film is interested in Innocentsin which a group of kids discover mysterious gifts far from the eyes of their parents.
At the antipodes of superhero films like X-Men Where Spiderman, the approach here is resolutely minimalist. In fact, it is above all a pretext for screenwriter and director Eskil Vogt, co-screenwriter of Julie (in 12 chapters), which uses this secret power acquired by its young protagonists as a metaphor for the power games in which children indulge among themselves. In this regard, the classic His Majesty of the Fliesby William Golding, adapted twice for the cinema (1963, 1990), certainly influenced the filmmaker.
We mainly follow little Ida, whom a recent move fills with resentment, and who moreover is jealous of the attention her parents give to her older sister, Anna, who is autistic. From the first day, Ida meets Ben, a neighbor of her age, whose sadistic inclinations exercise a certain fascination on her. Ben is the first to show unusual abilities. Joining the gang is Aisha, who also begins to develop strange skills.
With their blondness, Ida and Anna recall the protagonists of the British classic The Village of the Damned (The village of the damned, by Wolf Rilla, 1960; remade by John Carpenter in 1995), in which kids endowed with supernatural powers sow terror. We also sometimes think of TheChildren (by Tom Shankland, 2009), where children on holiday with their parents are affected by homicidal rage of unknown origin.
Slow-burning suspense, Innocents however, has a sobriety, a rigor, and a measure of its own.
Intimacy and proximity
Unveiled at Cannes in the Un certain regard section in 2021, Eskil Vogt’s film thus takes its time to establish, then nourish, a deafeningly distressing atmosphere. The bursts of fantasy and violence capture even more.
Moreover, the director, without taking pleasure in it, never backs down when it comes to showing the horror (cat lovers refrain). Horror by turns physical and psychological which, it should be said, does not necessarily manifest itself in the expected way or at the expected time.
We regret, that said, an all in all Manichaean approach to the protagonist-antagonist dynamic, Ben being endowed with a family history quickly dispatched referring to sub-Carrie. Vogt has a happier hand with the theme of sorority, also at the heart of the sublime (and very different) Little mom by Céline Sciamma, in theaters this week.
In the third act, the quasi-static confrontations multiply, redundant and lengthy. The note of ambiguity on which the film concludes also appears more lazy than daring.
Be that as it may, with its intimate staging and proximity camera, Innocents manages to eliminate the distance, literally and figuratively, between its young characters and the public. Before the spectacle of this inevitable end of innocence, the smile freezes, then dies.