Peril lurks in even the most picturesque of frames in Lucile Hadžihalilović’s French-language sophomore feature Evolution, as gorgeous shots of swaying sea anemone evoke the unforgiving power for the ocean. Early in the film, we begin to learn that an unsupervised boy swimming underwater among sharp-edged coral reefs may actually be in one of the safer places within his coastal community. Young Nicolas (Max Brebant) is not a sick boy, yet his mother takes him to a dimly-lit hospital for a mysterious injection, one also mass-administered to other boys his age. And there are plenty of similarly-aged women and boys to go around. In fact, the only people living in this creepy little ocean hamlet are pale, 30-something mothers/nurses and sons around the age of 10.
Nicolas and his friends know something is amiss, yet the exact nature of their plight remains a mystery, even as bizarre clues begin trickling out. The fair-skinned mothers feed their boys a brownish sludge filled with earthworms, and the similarly strange nurses place pink, fleshy masses into jars of formaldehyde and congregate to view filmed C-sections. When he is let out of the ominous hospital in which the boys are forced to spend increasing amounts of time shackled to beds, undergoing ultrasounds and receiving more shots, Nicolas spies on the women in the town, who steal off to the beach under the cover of night to hiss and writhe naked on the sand in an unholy and otherworldly display. Peeping on her in the shower, Nicolas notices strange suction cup-like structures on his mother’s back. And soon it becomes clear that, following the injections, something may be wriggling around inside of him.
Cinematographer Manuel Dacosse basks much of the film in natural light, which provides a sharp contrast between the dazzling sunlit underwater shots and dim, dreary hospital corridors. There’s both majesty and unforgiving harshness to each aquatic scene, and the formative powers of the churning ocean are juxtaposed by unsettling shots of restrained boys submerged up to their chins in large tanks for nefarious purposes within the hospital. Hadžihalilović keeps dialogue to a minimum in this film, which she also co-wrote, forcing her capable actors to convey their varying senses of menace, foreboding and (in one case only) sympathy through contemplative stares and subtle gestures.
Despite their oppression by this bizarre—and perhaps not entirely human—matriarchy, the boys have little option but to comply, adding a provocative element to a film about adults exploiting the bodies of helpless children, one that may make viewers squirm even more than an eventual turn toward a slightly more restrained version of Cronenbergian body horror. Through the film’s warped subtext, Hadžihalilović even turns the Oedipus complex on its ear, and it’s not too far of a stretch to view this film as a subversive commentary on reproductive rights. Though the pace can drag a bit, even for an 81-minute feature, and some viewers may be frustrated by the ultimate lack of clarity regarding the malevolent forces at play, Evolution largely succeeds due to its sumptuous cinematography and austere tone, which work together to create a skin-crawling sense of dread that’s difficult to shake.
The post Evolution appeared first on Spectrum Culture.