Lucile Hadzihalilovic's indelible Innocence (French, 2004) starts with a subterranean rumbling sound played over shaky, blurred credits. It creates a feeling of vague dread that remains throughout the film, infusing even the most joyful scenes with a sense of foreboding. As the opening credits roll, the viewer prepares for a horror film. That's when the surrealist fairy tale begins. A small coffin arrives at a boarding school and soon six pairs of bare girl legs surround it. The new girl has arrived.

The girl in the coffin is Iris. She doesn't know where she is or how she got there, but she is told by the other girls that she is home now and that she won't be seeing her brother. She is given the red ribbons that are part of her new uniform. The other girls change their ribbons to reflect their new status. The youngest wears red, the second youngest wears orange, and so on up the rainbow until the eldest in violet. Seven girls, from ages 5 to 11. This is the school of girlhood. It is quite literally the institution of gender.

We learn about how the school works along with Iris. She seems to quickly forget about her life before her resurrection at the school. Her classes consist of dance and natural science. The girls are instructed in grace, poise, and their role in nature. Tackled by a less subtle director, this would be a very different film. The idea of a school whose curriculum is entirely focused on gender training is ripe for broad satire. That has the potential to be a bitingly funny film, but Hadzihalilovic isn't interested in making didactic statements about gender and society. As she explains in an interview on the DVD, her film is sensorial as opposed to expository. Innocence is like a dream, albeit one that feels very real. It is full of symbols, but nothing is ever explained. The lack of explanations only exacerbates the viewer's distress. What exactly are these girls being groomed for?

Iris discovers there are many rules at the school. Childhood does not mean freedom. Her dance instructor informs her that obedience is the path to happiness. The most important rule is that one must never try to escape. There is a huge wall around the school's thickly forested grounds. The girls are trapped, yet their prison is frequently filled with pleasures. Many scenes show the girls delighting in play, but these never feel liberating. We're too worried that something terrible is about to happen and too aware of the walls that surround them.

The sense of anxiety that the director nurtures is entirely intentional. It mirrors the anxiety we feel about girlhood. The title is absolutely not ironic. By showing the girls at play in their underwear, the director audaciously emphasizes their innocence and dares the viewer to suggest otherwise. The MPAA thought this was provocative enough to give it an R rating which says way more about the MPAA and the sexual political climate in the US than it does about the film.

I won't reveal the intricacies of the plot or how the carefully crafted suspense is resolved. Innocence is a film that revels in mystery. It's also one of the most original, beautiful, and richly layered inquiries into girlhood that I have ever encountered.

The film is based on the 1901 novella Mine-Haha: or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls by German expressionist Frank Wedekind. The novella is about to be published in English for the first time and I look forward to reading the book that inspired such an extraordinary film.