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Lucile Hadzihalilovic
French-Bosnian art-house film-maker with a style all her own. One major theme is omnipresent in all her films: The upbringing, training and social shaping of children and young adults, often by strange, controlling or malicious pressures by adults. This includes disciplinary schools, warped step-parents, intense motherhood, strict guardians and influential adults. She works often with her long-term partner and collaborator Gaspar Noé, but his approach only makes a partial impression on her first bleak movie 'Jean-Pierre's Mouth', and the rest are uniquely hers and much more atmospheric, visual and abstractly poetic. 'Innocence' is where she found her film language, in this case not yet diving into surrealism, but exploring the upbringing of young girls in an odd and very pretty boarding school, where girls' training and maturation almost becomes mysterious and magical. After that, her films became much more surreal. Lucile Hadzihalilovic's films have become increasingly enigmatic and challenging with every outing. At this point, as with Lynch, it's possible not everything in this movie has a meaning and is simply there to broaden the right-brain with an emotive bizarre mystery. This film is based on an equally enigmatic book that seemed to have left all reviewers puzzled, but I wouldn't be surprised if Hadzihalilovic made changes in line with her own interests since the movie reflects many of her previous themes. The 'plot' involves a man taking meticulous but detached care of a young, secluded girl, and especially her dentures which are made of temporary ice made from her frozen saliva(!), and which need to be changed every few hours, preparing her for the world out there and for the day when she will have permanent but fragile glass dentures. The girl may or may not be his daughter, there are also memories of a wife now gone, a mysterious malignant instigator stranger at a bar, and a very confusing and violent relationship with a waitress which could be interpreted in a variety of surreal ways. Although this movie lends itself to endless partial interpretations, I see this as covering several themes involving relationships, especially parenting and marriage. Glass is an often-used motif as a fragile instrument for connections with others, either triggering intimate, familial or romantic memories, or used to cause permanent trauma and scarring, but also symbolically as the young girl's fragile 'dentures' that enable her to join and interact with society. This is a girl who is being prepared for adult life and relationships by a man that is both very fussy and attentive as well as cold and over-protective, scared of the day when 'transfer of guardianship' will occur, when her aforementioned 'glass dentures' become permanent, and he has to release her to society. An ominous painting portraying a mysterious house changes according to the current mood and day, reveals secrets of the child's birth, and prophesies her future release, thus reflecting the man's fears. The waitress may be his inner feminine side, or guilt over his relationship with his ex-wife, or another example of a damaging relationship, as exemplified by her overbearing and unromantic doctor-friend. But when you combine these symbols together with the ending, and some key phrases by the instigator about wanting to be the waitress, his bizarre psychic link with her, the many times that the characters interchanged, a solution of the film's puzzle emerges after multiple viewings: He is damaged by the war, unable to connect with others like his wife, and the waitress represents his ideal self as exemplified by his ex-wife, which is why he sees his wife in her. But the evil instigator is his personal fears, hence why he caused him to attack his ideal self, scarring her horribly. But when he loses his daughter to the world, taken by the same persona of fear, his fears come to the fore in a panic, and his ideal self who looks briefly like his wife attacks him back and literally eats his flesh, taking over his persona. Looking at it this way, the ending is positive rather than dark. By the way, the character's name is Aalbert Scellinc (an anagram for Still Clean Braces?), and his nickname is Earwig due to his sensitive ears and ability to hear through walls like a bug. An intriguing film that sticks in your mind and heart like a dark dream even when you don't get it, and it is therefore successful. Hadzihalilovic's best film, re-using and improving on several themes from her earlier outings. Hadzihalilovic's previous movie Innocence used a slightly odd, dreamy, boarding dance-school as a metaphor for the social training that little girls go through when growing up, but the surrealism was hidden in its attic. This follow-up dives into bizarre symbolism and is an enigmatic artsy body-horror movie, which I interpret as dealing with the theme of motherhood, the strange bond between mother and boy, and the domestication of young boys as they grow up only to have to release them to the larger world of industry. This is depicted with another combination of visually intriguing but austere, organic, primal sets and locations. It takes place on an island populated only by women and their young boys, both with close and even physical links to the sea and its starfish. Some act as nurses, and as the boys grow up, they are put through a series of very bizarre physical transformations and ordeals involving pregnancies. It's as if the film depicts motherhood and pregnancy through the eyes of young boys, as bizarrely biological and with its roots in a primordial kingdom of sea-life and strange creatures, and mothers being half sea-creature due to pregnancies, except the film gets a bit lost in its body-horror visuals. One young boy is befriended by a nurse who seems to have other plans for his future, wanting him to develop beyond the basic evolutionary functions and close ties to mothers, and to develop human civilization... Hadzihalilovic dials back on the surrealism this time, but keeps it hovering in the attic of this atmospheric movie, much like in Innocence. Once again, she explores the role of adults in shaping young people for better or worse, this time with a 15-year old orphan who lost her mother, and who has mommy issues haunted by cold death. She grows up idealizing the fantasy story of 'The Snow Queen' by Hans Christian Andersen, and when she runs away from home, finds herself on the set of a film based on that story, with an unstable actress in the title role. An unhealthy emotional dependence and connection forms... The film makes use of many themes and symbols, the dangerous draw of adulthood which can lead to death, or to cold detachment and broken emotions, her precious beads that serve as her emotional connections and trust, and a shard of glass from the Snow Queen that promises endless fantasy worlds and realms. The movie-set of snow and ice combine with a real, very wintry mountainous location, as well as with her dreams, creating a mildly surreal effect. But this is not a full surreal movie, only an atmospheric one where icy realms threaten and impose adulthood on a teenager who has idolized adults. |
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