On the Norwegian side, the audience turned to reward The InnoceNot only in Paris during the Strange Festival, but also in Strasbourg, where the film received the ultimate distinction, the octopus gold doubled the FEFFS audience prize. A triple coronation with the New Genre Grand Prix for Eskil Vogt's second feature film. A success that he also owes to Joachim Sorter with whom he co-cenarizes his films. After Blind who highlighted the life of an isolated blind, Eskil Vogt (see our Interview) continues its exploration of the senses but also of disability. Children discover paranormal powers that add up and combine when they come together. Another form of awakening is then emerging, faced with the power to adjugate death.
Do you want to play a game?
From the first scene of the film, the young heroine Ida wakes up in the car, worried, looking lost in the void as the family gets ready to move into a Norwegian suburb. Without hatred or pleasure, with the innocent coldness of childhood, she pinches her sister Anna, autistic and unable to react. Blonde with blue, innocent and fragile eyes, a body in the process that is won by moods sometimes experiences the worst. An image that will not leave the film until generic, that of children who still have only an evanescent notion of evil and the infinite freedom of the first transgression. Parents are the great ones absent from the film since they appear only fleetingly. Children seem to be left to themselves or at least without proper control. They wander in the forest or in this small suburb of HLM where problems seem so rare.
One of them, Ben, develops telekinetic powers. It all starts with a simple game as it diverts small pebbles from their trajectory. One game by dragging another, the probably tormented boy strove to check the cat's theorem that falls on his legs from the top of a stairwell cage of a building. The injured beast will be coldly executed by the child. From this moment on and as his powers evolve exponentially, the spectator is at the same stage as Ida, frightened and fragile since he is the only one without powers.
A predation ratio is gradually born and the impression that Ben could derail at any moment. This tension will instill crescendo throughout the film. Fixed plans recall those ofIt Follow-up of the David Robert Mitchell, where death seemed to arise at any moment. Could this child in a state of anger shoot down a tree or even a building by thought? It's cramped in the movie chair that cold sweat slowly grabs us. Isn't it said that children sometimes experience unrivalled cruelty, still blind to the inquisitorial gaze of society?
« I don't believe in the cliché of angelic children. »
By offering a radical reading of the world of children, here perfectly hermetic to adults, Ida is delivered to herself and without ever flinching yet, she will have to navigate carefully. The Innocent This is in keeping with the fantastic line of these films where teenagers have to manage themselves but this time from the perspective of childhood, which increases the feeling of vulnerability. In a maintenance granted to Le Point at the Cannes Film Festival, the director revisits his artistic approach. « The idea of the film came after my first child, at the age of 35 », explains Eskil Vogt, father of a boy and a girl. « I felt again what it was like to be a child, this awkward discovery of the world... Memories that I had completely forgotten came up and I realized how different this world is from the adult world. […] »
« We come to the world without moral code, without sympathy, like narcissistic sociopaths, and we must learn by increasing the codes of socialization. »
By taking back the fairy tale of golden childhood and the myth of candour, Eskil establishes a clinical but realistic diagnosis: « The child lives in his world and, when something impossible or inexplicable comes to him, he just says OK! and moves on. At the same time, we feel anxiety at these ages, and I wanted to approach this inner magic of childhood through a fantastic story. » In the same interview, it is also reported that children aged between 7 and 10 were selected from among 2000 candidates in elementary schools in Norway and that they benefited from a constant coach and psychological counsellor throughout the shooting for about 40 days.
Sober and elegant in its staging, The Innocents is sleek, even on the musical level and finally proposes an eight enclosed between four HLM where childhood experiences the limits of power. A fantastic film that is highly recommended when it comes out with us, since at the moment the release date remains undetermined in France!
The trailer:
I can't wait to see him!
Me too.
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