Évolution (2015)
The only residents of young Nicholas' sea-side town
are women and boys. When he sees a corpse in the ocean one day, he
begins to question his existence and surroundings. Why must he, and all
the other boys, be hospitalised?
Director:
Lucile HadzihalilovicStars:
7 wins & 13 nominations.
See more awards »
Nicolas is a boy living on a remote island set in the future, or another
planet - or is it a dream? His village consists of white-painted houses
located above the sea with a volcanic rock and black sand coastline,
populated by young women and boys all of a similar age to Nicolas.
Whilst swimming, Nicolas makes a discovery in the ocean, which is
shrugged off by his mother, who, like all the women in the town has
tied-back hair, is pale and wears a simple thin beige dress. Nicolas is
curious, thinks that he is being lied to and starts to explore his
environment, witnessing some unsettling scenes. He then finds himself
taken to a hospital-like building where he, along with the others,
undergoes a series of medical procedures by the women, dressed as
nurses. He is befriended by one nurse, who becomes instrumental in the
film's denouement. The film is not easy to categorise; it is not only
enigmatic but beautifully filmed with deeply poetic imagery. It reflects
the fear of the unknown, ...
Language:
FrenchRelease Date:
16 March 2016 (France) See more »Also Known As:
Evolution See more »Company Credits
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Color:
ColorAspect Ratio:
2.35 : 1Did You Know?
Trivia
The hospital scenes were filmed in an old abandoned hospital. See more »Quotes
Stella: What's that?Nicolas: A ferris wheel.
Stella: And what does this wheel do?
Nicolas: You get on it and it spins around.
See more »
Soundtracks
Concerto pour ondes Martenot, II - adagio allegroComposed by Marcel Landoswki
If I had to pin down "Evolution," I'd call it a coming-of-age story,
though it doesn't often employ the symbolic shorthand that so many tales
of pubescent terror do. No, "Evolution" feels like a transmission from
an alien world, one where all the important narrative information you
need is imparted visually. This is a supremely confident story about
Nicolas (Max Brebant), a lonely little boy who grows up in a community of sickly-looking women.
Nicolas refuses to believe, as his mother (Julie-Marie Parmentier)
insists, that he is sick. He swims in the turbulent ocean that
surrounds his island home whenever he can and gets lost in daydreams
that he visualizes through crude pencil drawings he keeps hidden away
from his mom and the legion of pale, sunken-eyed nurses. They keep
Nicolas captive in a rundown-looking hospital for young boys. There are
no men on the island, only boys and women.
We learn about Nicolas's world in increments, but not just
because we are learning alongside Nicolas. This is a movie about the
alien feeling that accompanies any natural process of adaptation.
Writer/director Lucile Hadžihalilović ("Innocence")
respects and preserves the mysterious, brooding energy that ushers
adolescent Nicolas from one revelation to the next. This is, after all, a
story about characters who know more than they care to admit and the
moments that force them to change or die. It's a movie about discovery,
and it's the most novel, unsettling horror film of the year.
We
learn so much about Nicolas based on Hadžihalilović's gorgeous nature
photography. We watch as Brebant navigates the shores of a remote island
landscape: loamy rocks cover a sulfur-grey beach while waves roar and
crash on the shore. Hadžihalilović never lets us lose sight of the fact
that Nicolas is, unlike his fishy-looking captors, seeing the world
through human eyes: we tellingly don't see the ocean floor until we've
already seen the skyline.
Still, we watch Nicolas from a
distance, as we watch (from what appears to be a camera crane or maybe
just through a wide-angle lens) when he travels across his island home,
his path lit only by a small lantern. We know things he doesn't, as we
see in scenes where Nicolas' nurses stoically watch medical footage of a
Cesarean-section birth. But Nicolas understands that his world is
unstable, that information is being withheld from him and that the
status quo his mother enforces is ... well, off. He chokes down the
weird gruel-like noodle dish she prepares for him, but based on his
facial expression you can tell that on some level, Nicolas
knows something is wrong. He likewise wants to trust nurse Stella (Roxane Duran),
an atypically curious companion who becomes like a surrogate mother to
Nicolas after his real mother abandons him to hospital care. But Nicolas
can't trust Stella, as we see in the scene where she practically drowns
him when they go swimming together.
Hadžihalilović's direction is remarkably assured. She and cinematographer Manuel Dacosse
explain so much just using a dark color palette of seaweed-greens,
brackish-greys, and azure blues. But Brebant's body language says almost
as much, though it sometimes appears to be communicating relatively
quietly. Take for example the scene where Stella asks Nicolas to see his
drawings. She discovers his sketchbook completely by accident: she
insists that they shower together once he is admitted to the hospital,
though he resists the idea ("I can do it myself").
Once she starts to undress him, Nicolas' notebook falls out
of his back pocket. He rushes to retrieve his drawings, but it's too
late: Stella sees the book and politely demands that he show it to her.
Here's where Brebant really impresses: he pauses before acquiescing. And
in that pause, you can see that Nicolas knows more than his actions
indicate. He knows he's not just being paranoid and that there is a very
real chance that showing his drawings to Stella will lead to
punishment. But he submits anyway. Without any dialogue, Brebant (who is
filmed in a longshot that shows his body from head-to-toe) shows us
that his character is excited but also suspicious. He's flattered by the
attention and wants to let his guard down (perhaps because of having
grown accustomed to submitting to the will of women like his mother).
And he wants to change, an overwhelming desire that shows in his inward
bent knees, deferred gaze and slouched shoulders. The makers of
"Evolution" may dazzle viewers with an intoxicating visual style, but
they never lose sight of Nicolas' humanity. Do not miss this film.
Final rating: 10/10 for the genre and 10/10 overall and again a horror movie from, which are always incredible and straight direct to the point but also with a sense, with a message, and with a touch that you will always remember. Do not miss this film.
And so this event about horror movies only ends with a true blockbuster in the history of real good horror movies. Hope you liked this little blog event. From tomorrow on we continue with the normal program again, new trailer, new reviews, but still all about movies, which I love so much. Thanks for reading and have fun watching movies.
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