About the Series Perhaps only art can accurately examine the adolescent’s extreme state of transformation, because art is itself an adolescent impulse—in constant pursuit of a new, anguished, experimental, destructive, lyrical, language with which to communicate existence. The coming-of-age film has served to probe at the most volatile and sensitive aspects of this inescapable period of transformation and existential agony, affecting body and identity alike. This April the Bijou Film Board examines some of cinema’s most provocative and idiosyncratic chroniclers of harsh truths and raw humanism through the unflinching experiences of their young, tragic protagonists. Loosely adapted from Frank Wedekind’s provocative novella Mine-Haha, or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls, Innocence configures an altogether dreamy and oppressive landscape: a forested all-girls boarding school where students arrive in coffins and are given coloured ribbons to signify their age. The girls are taught a bizarre curriculum of ballet and natural history by elegant women teachers (including an early performance from Marion Cotillard), occasionally overseen by a despotic headmistress (Corinne Marchand, Cléo From 5 to 7). As six-year-old Iris, the newest arrival, attempts to adapt to this routine, the uglier objectives of the institution become impossible to ignore. Shooting resplendently on CinemaScope, Lucile Hadzihalilovic (The Ice Tower) and cinematographer Benoît Debie (a regular collaborator of Gaspar Noé, Hadzihalilovic’s creative partner) find the unnatural within the natural world, crafting stunning, verdant scenes of obedience, performance, and precarious girlhood.
a place steeped in local flavor & history, alive with participatory art, and a living room to the University of Iowa. #downtowniowacity
