Innocence(L'Ecole)

The Hollywood Reporter by

Sustains a pervasive feeling of anxiety and suspense, despite an absence of dramatic conflict or resolution.

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

This is the weirdest film I've seen all year, or at least the weirdest good film. It's also among the most powerful.

Variety by Dennis Harvey

This genuine curio maintains its mystery to the end.

New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman

A visually lush and eerily enigmatic parable of female sexuality, Lucile Hadzihalilovic's ominous fairy tale raises questions you'll be wondering about for days.

TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox

Hadzihalilovic succeeds brilliantly at crafting a meaningful enigma that somehow grasps the essence of adolescence, but only grows more mysterious with each revelation.

The New York Times by Manohla Dargis

The line between cinematic art and exploitation has rarely seemed finer and nervier, at least in recent memory, than in the French film Innocence.

Village Voice by Michael Atkinson

Innocence is not merely the year's best first film, but one of the great statements on the politics of being 'tween.

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

The more overtly allegorical Innocence becomes, the duller it gets.

The New Republic by Stanley Kauffmann

The Oxford English Dictionary says that an allegory is "an extended or continued metaphor." And to think that this definition was coined when a French film called Innocence was still very far in the future! But how aptly this film proves the point.

New York Post by V.A. Musetto

One of the oddest, most perplexing -- and delightful -- films to come along this year. And last year, too.