Review: Evolution

Evolution (15)

France/Belgium/Spain 2015 82 mins Subtitles Dir: Lucile Hadzihalilovic Starring: Max Brebant, Roxane Duran, Julie-Marie Parmentier, Mathieu Goldfeld, Nissim Renard, Pablo-Noé Etienne

It’s a brave director who makes sensual films about pre-pubescent children in the current climate of paedo panic and ugly Twittermob fury. But as the wife of arch-provocateur Gaspar Noe, Lucile Hadzihalilovic is presumably used to the odd bit of controversy. It’s been twelve long years since her previous feature, Innocence – a dark, surreal and beguiling modern fairytale-cum-allegory set in a mysterious school for young girls. Now she’s back with another feast of disquieting strangeness. Possibly for the sake of balance, this time her subjects are little boys.

Ten-year-old Nicolas (Max Brebant) appears to live an idyllic life with his mum (Julie-Marie Parmentier) in a remote, isolated coastal village. He spends his days diving in the clear blue water surrounding a beautiful coral reef. But one day, he thinks he sees a child’s body floating in the water. Mum naturally pooh-poohs his claim. But then all kinds of other troubling questions arise. Why does this community seem to be populated exclusively by pre-pubescent boys and their identically dressed mothers? What’s that weird wormy food the nippers are fed? Why would perfectly healthy children require regular doses of ‘medicine’ administered by a team of nurses to prevent their bodies changing? Who’s the strange woman Nicolas draws in his sketchbook? Why’s he’s obsessed with starfish? And what exactly is it that the womenfolk are up to when they writhe nakedly together on the rocks in the moonlight? Is this some kind of weird feminist lesbian cult, or is something more icky going on?

To give away more, as some reviewers have done, would be to spoil the surprises Hadzihalilovic’s fishy tale has in store, suffice it to say that this beautifully photographed, genuinely creepy film comes across like a mash-up of Cronenberg’s early body horrors, Brian Yuzna’s Society, John Sayles’ The Secret of Roan Inish, and, er, the mediocre Arnie comedy Junior. The setting is deliberately vague (though it was actually shot in David Cameron’s favourite holiday destination, Lanzarote) and the meaning open to interpretation. Read it as another dark modern fairytale in a fantasy setting if you wish, or tease out messages about matriarchal societies and the fear of pubescence. Alternatively, it could be taken as a mirror of Innocence, offering another meditation on gender roles in a society where children are raised by adults who may not have their best interests at heart. What’s not in doubt is that this is skilful filmmaking, mysterious without being wilfully opaque, underlining Hadzihalilovic status as a singular if frustratingly unprolific talent.