Comedie De L'Innocence on DVD (2000)

Not so innocent and not a comedy

Bill Johnson from Leamington , 08/07/2004

Arianne (Isabelle Huppert, her of the stone face) has a child Camille. He has an imaginary (or maybe not) friend. Gradually the friend takes over Camille and he leads his mother to meet Isabella, another woman in a distant part of town who has recently lost her son Paul in a drowning accident. Camille/Paul then informs Arianne that he now has two mothers and Isabella, the new mother, comes to live at Arianne?s house. There are further daft events but to tell any more would be a spoiler. Directed by Raoul Ruiz the film is half ghost story, half psychological puzzle in the fashion of ?Sixth Sense? but when they are put together they just don?t gel partly because the film is taken at such a slow pace and partly because although Ruiz creates some good creepy sequences he then throws it all away in a mess of weirdness and fantasy which contributes nothing to the story, for example, the maid Helene has a habit of throwing dice that always come up 3,3,1 but this little gem contributes absolutely nothing to the story.

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Messing about with your mind....

GordonJ Sheppard from SE London , 31/03/2005

Don't bother to rent this film. You will truly waste your time. Because no matter how you try you will never be able to fathom what the film is about. The film maker is just having a damned good laugh at your expense. He throws every thing into the mysterious plots, all the time knowing that he has you hooked - yet there are no logical conclusions in the film. The entire film is just 'Messing about with your mind'. Like for instance, the long sequence where a maid tosses three dice on to a table repeatedly and comes up with 3,3,1 every time. Yet it has no significance at all. Apart from 'padding the film out to fill up time' it serves no purpose at all.

This is the very type of film that I loathe. Where the film maker takes the mickey out of the film viewer. I prefer French films to Hollywood, but this one, is a one of the worst French films I have seen.

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An odd, but pleasing film

Jan from London [Highly rated reviewer] , 29/03/2004

There is little to say in a review for this film that won't give the plot away. Suffice it to say that all the performances are excellent, even the boy at the centre of the piece pulls it off.

The film as a little off the wall, but is very nicely ended, with the whole story making sense.

What does a mother do who when her son is convinced he is someone else's son? React with slightly more emotion perhaps?

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One of my favourite films

A customer from Liverpool, England , 20/04/2005

I saw this at the filmhouse in Edinburgh and it is one of the few films that has stuck with me. I normally hate films with children in since they often seem to be exploiting both the children and the audience. This film is an exception.

If you like Amelie or Jane Austen you will love this film!

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Keeping Cool

FrankIV [Highly rated reviewer] , 11/02/2005

Quite a glacial little film at times, with the archetypal French middle-class family at its centre taking the most surprising events with a calmness and rationality which made me a little impatient.

Isabelle Huppert is wonderful, as always, the direction is sure and the situation is always intriguing. Worth watching, but you might find yourself shouting at the screen.

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Spooky and Strange...

robertconnor from Gloucestershire [Highly rated reviewer] , 21/01/2005

On his birthday a small boys tells his mother he is not her son, and that he wants to go home to his real mother.

In some ways Comedie De L'Innocence feels like it comes from a different time of movie-making, perhaps the 60's or 70's. Certainly it reminded me of Losey's Secret Ceremony (1968), and Richard Loncraine's Full Circle (1977), both of which deal with loss, grief and relationships between parents and 'lost' children (curiously both films star Mia Farrow). All three films are populated with unsympathetic characters who behave in strange and unexplained ways. All three films have a chilly feel, both emotionally and literally. All three films focus on mother-child relationships, and ultimately all three films pose the question - 'what is real, what is imagined?'

Beautiful but flawed, it offers no easy answers and leaves much hanging, unexplained and strange.

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