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Innocence
Metascore
78 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 13 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 13
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 13
  3. Negative: 0 out of 13
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  1. New York Post
    Reviewed by: V.A. Musetto
    100
    One of the oddest, most perplexing -- and delightful -- films to come along this year. And last year, too.
  2. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Ken Fox
    100
    Hadzihalilovic succeeds brilliantly at crafting a meaningful enigma that somehow grasps the essence of adolescence, but only grows more mysterious with each revelation.
  3. Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Reviewed by: Sean Axmaker
    100
    Confronts the line between the celebration and the exploitation of innocence with an uneasy tension that is discomforting at best.
  4. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Michael Atkinson
    90
    Innocence is not merely the year's best first film, but one of the great statements on the politics of being 'tween.
  5. Salon.com
    Reviewed by: Andrew O'Hehir
    80
    This is the weirdest film I've seen all year, or at least the weirdest good film. It's also among the most powerful.
  6. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Manohla Dargis
    80
    The line between cinematic art and exploitation has rarely seemed finer and nervier, at least in recent memory, than in the French film Innocence.
  7. Variety
    Reviewed by: Dennis Harvey
    80
    This genuine curio maintains its mystery to the end.
  8. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Wilmington
    75
    An unashamed art picture, the kind of film where extreme aestheticism mixes with nightmare dread, where the story resembles a bad dream and where Freudian symbols cluster around the events like a swarm of insects. It's a very pretty film, but it's also lean, enigmatic and so obscure.
  9. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    75
    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.
  10. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Sura Wood
    70
    Sustains a pervasive feeling of anxiety and suspense, despite an absence of dramatic conflict or resolution.
  11. The New Republic
    Reviewed by: Stanley Kauffmann
    70
    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.
  12. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Ronnie Scheib
    70
    Hadzihalilovic, the wife of cinematic agent provocateur Gaspar Noé and his sometime collaborator, has created a work of limpid beauty and eerie menace that some undoubtedly will dismiss as kiddie porn.
  13. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Noel Murray
    50
    The more overtly allegorical Innocence becomes, the duller it gets.
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User Reviews

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User Score
7.5 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 15 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 6
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 6
  3. Negative: 2 out of 6
  1. nathang.
    10
    Outstanding film, full of insight into the nature of female boarding schools and their existance as a mechanism for sustaining and instilling class and gender distinctions in modern society, beautifully and powerfully shot, this is an enlightening film!… Full Review »
  2. Raritan
    10
    An extremely interesting film that makes you think. Strange, yes, weird yes, but you will have the plot going round in your head for ever and then probably never understand it.… Full Review »
  3. SW.
    10
    The whole film is a very clever metaphor for coming of age.
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