Unlike the rest of the selections in this month’s column, Lucile Hadžihalilović’s films aren’t explicitly queer. But the Bosnian-French filmmaker’s enigmatic explorations of gender and sexuality have a fluidity to them that’s at least queer-adjacent. Like Catherine Breillat and Angela Carter, Hadžihalilović is obsessed with the psychosexual undercurrents of classic fairy tales: Shookone describes her debut feature Innocence (pictured above) as “perfectly framed fairy tale cinema for adults,” while her latest, The Ice Tower, is, per PowWow, “French fantastique meets eastern European fairy tale in a movie that suggests a young adult Jean Rollin picture with an actual budget.”
In between are Evolution (“the darkest fairy tale not meant for kids,” according to Nick) and Earwig (“always in flux, caught between a fairy tale and a horror film,” writes Jakub), two of the more cryptic films in an already-opaque body of work. But what are these movies about, you might ask? They’re about hypnagogic sensations and dense visual symbolism, appealing to the collective unconscious through beautiful, unsettling imagery—like a girl with ice for teeth, a cold and beautiful queen or an island where there are only boys. They transport you to a seductive and beguiling world, where nothing makes intellectual sense but works on more intuitive levels.
My personal favorite of Hadžihalilović’s works is Innocence, about an all-girls school, hidden behind stone walls on a lush estate, whose students are being prepared for some kind of important yet terrifying purpose. It’s full of springtime imagery of innocence in bloom—colored ribbons, cool earth, dappled light and buckled shoes—overlaid with an unspoken, palpable feeling of dread that captures the morbid fascination of realizing what it means to be a woman in this world.
Severin’s new box set brings together the director’s four feature films, with two of them making their North American Blu-ray debuts. These are accompanied by loads of special features, including a 60-page book with new writing about the films.
